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THE BACKS OF BOOKS 

AND OTHER ESSAYS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 





























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THE 

BACKS of BOOKS 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 
IN LIBRARIANSHIP 


By 


J 


WILLIAM WARNER BISHOP, A.M. 

Librarian of the University 
of Michigan 



BALTIMORE 

THE WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY 
1926 


2 . 

Y \ 




r I>'° £ ' 



Copyright, 1926 


/ 


THE WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY 
Made in United States of America 
Published March, 1926 


COMPOSED AND PRINTED AT THE 

WAVERLY PRESS 

BY 

The Williams & Wilkins Company 
Baltimore, Md., U. S. A. 



/ 


© Cl A891154 



'v\t> V' 




THESE ADDRESSES ARE DEDICATED 
TO MY WIFE 

THEIR INSPIRATION AND THEIR 
KINDLIEST CRITIC 


























PREFACE 

If an apology is needed for bringing into collected 
form these essays on various phases of the librarian’s 
calling, it may be found in the efforts which are now 
making toward increasing the somewhat meagre 
volume of material for the study of librarianship. 
I am concerned to rescue these essays and addresses 
from the obscurity of various library bulletins and 
journals in the hope that my younger colleagues 
may find something of interest and possible aid to 
their studies. It may be remarked that while my 
occasional prophecies have not all been realized, I 
have found very little in the experience of twenty- 
five years to cause me to revise or modify the views 
I expressed in my earlier articles. Whether this 
puts me down as hopelessly fossilized or really right, 
I leave to the kindly judgment of my readers. 

My thanks are due to the editors of various journals 
for their kind permission to reprint these addresses. 

W. W. B. 

March 7,1925 











































































































































































































































































































































































CONTENTS 


1. The Backs of Books. 1 

2. The Vatican Library: Some Notes by a Student. 15 

3. The Vatican Library: Twenty-five Years After. 25 

4. Book-Hunting in Rome. 28 

5. Should the Librarian Be a Bibliophile. 37 

6. A Decade of Library Progress in America. 49 

7. The Amount of Help to be given to Readers. 65 

8. Two Unsolved Problems in Library Work. 82 

9. Training in the Use of Books. 99 

10. Cataloging as an Asset. 125 

11. The Theory of Reference Work. 149 

12. Leadership through Learning. 165 

13. Changing Ideals in Librarianship. 183 

14. Our College and University Libraries—A Survey and a 

Program. 202 

15. The Library and Post-school Education. 226 

16. The American Library Association at the Crossroads. 252 

17. The Record of Science. 270 

18. Fashions in Books. 304 


IX 






















% 




» 



I 












THE BACKS OF BOOKS 1 


Few men who are called upon to address graduat¬ 
ing classes in colleges and schools can refrain from 
the temptation to usurp the functions of the preacher. 
Here is an opportunity too tempting to be missed. 
The familiar surroundings so soon to be abandoned, 
the eager students facing their life-work, the parting 
of teachers and pupils, combine to set the com¬ 
mencement speaker in the way of moralizing on the 
situation, so well-worn by manifold predecessors, 
so painfully familiar to every audience of this sort. 
Try as I may to avoid preaching to you, I too shall 
probably be found pointing morals, if not adorning 
tales, for the occasion inevitably lends itself to the 
giving of gratuitous advice. 

There are, however, some differences between the 
graduation of a class of prospective librarians and 
the ordinary school or college commencement. 
There is the obvious fact, which this class shares 
with all similar classes in professional schools, that 
you have been prepared for a specific line of work 
and are about to enter on the actual practice of 
your profession. The impending change from theory 

Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises, Library 
School, New York Public Library, June 12, 1914. 

1 


2 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


to practice faces likewise the graduates of schools of 
law, medicine, theology, and engineering. But your 
situation differs in at least one respect from theirs. 
For years they (and you) have been hearing lectures, 
working in laboratories, studying text-books. From 
books they have chiefly gathered the theory and 
training they are about to exercise on a more or less 
unwilling world. But you are to abandon the formal 
study of individual books as vehicles of knowledge 
for the practical handling of books in masses for the 
benefit of other people. In other words, you are to 
take what you have learned in a few books and apply 
it to the marshalling and serving of many books 
in libraries in aid of readers. What you have gained 
in theory is to be applied in practice to the very 
material from which the theory has been evolved, 
only the application is no longer for your own bene¬ 
fit, but for another’s. 

Your work therefore will necessarily involve a 
collection of books as a fundamental basis. With¬ 
out books there are no libraries or librarians. It is 
occasionally necessary for some of us to speak up and 
say this plainly, for the library press and the dis¬ 
cussion at conventions teem with so much talk about 
methods, about ways and means, about library 
extension, about librarians, that one sometimes 
wonders what it is all about, and where the books 
come in. So you will, perhaps, pardon an older 


THE BACKS OP BOOKS 


3 


librarian for speaking, not about his favorite methods 
in library work, not about the nobility of our calling, 
nor even the mission of the librarian, but just a bit 
about our books and the extent to which we know 
them. “Die Hauptsache ” said a German scholar 
to me years ago in discussing libraries, “Die Haupt¬ 
sache ist die Bucher zu besitzen.” Absolutely funda¬ 
mental, but too often neglected, is this cardinal 
principle of library economy. Without books, many, 
many books, there is no need for this school, or for 
this graduating class. The chief defect of our 
American libraries is, perhaps, the exaltation of 
method over content. To say this in the very home 
and citadel of training in method—a library school— 
may seem strange, even presumptuous; but to say 
it in the building which houses the noble collections 
of The New York Public Library is both safe, and, 
I trust, acceptable. 

I wish, then, to speak very briefly on the librarian’s 
knowledge of the books entrusted to his care (par¬ 
ticularly in libraries of some size), on his familiarity 
with his collections. How far may he actually recall 
even the titles of books, much less know their con¬ 
tents? Is it possible for a truly competent person 
to remember the names of practically all the authors 
and titles in a good-sized library? Of course definite 
answers to these questions are obviously difficult. 
But I call to mind many a librarian who certainly 


4 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


holds in his head many thousand separate titles, 
who can with an extraordinary quickness name 
different editions and publishers of books he has 
consulted but a few times. I once asked my honored 
friend Mr. Anderson H. Hopkins, then assistant 
librarian of the John Crerar Library, how far he 
was personally familiar with the books in that in¬ 
stitution—I knew they had all passed through his 
hands (for the library was then new), and that he 
had a very retentive memory, but I was hardly pre¬ 
pared to hear him say that up to the first sixty 
thousand volumes purchased he could recall practi¬ 
cally every title, but that above that number he 
began to lose track of the accessions. I am convinced 
that this was no over-statement, for in my own ex¬ 
perience I have met not a few librarians whose knowl¬ 
edge of titles equalled his. Such men as Dr. Spofford 
and Mr. David Hutcheson of the Library of Congress 
doubtless knew intimately several times that number. 
And it is the familiar experience of reference librarians 
that at least appropriate titles, if not always the 
one best book, seem often to leap into memory to 
answer a reader’s demand. The older choice lib¬ 
raries of about one hundred thousand volumes were 
probably pretty well held in mind by their directors, 
particularly when these were men of unusual ability. 

It is a curious sort of knowledge, this acquaintance 
with a library. It is the backs of books that we 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


5 


know; those solemn rows that are seldom disturbed, 
those less stately ones whose battered appearance 
and unsteady carriage testify to their popularity. 
The familiar anecdote of the Kansas legislator who 
objected to an appropriation for more books for the 
university library touches peculiarly the librarian. 
“Mr. Speaker,” said he, “I object to spending this 
money. Why, they’ve got forty thousand books 
there at Lawrence now, and I don’t believe any one 
of them professors has read ’em all yet!” Neither 
have we read ours, and yet we know them, and 
sometimes know them well. 

At least we know them well enough to help other 
folk to get what they want out of them. In every 
library in the world persons are constantly seeking 
material on topics which the librarian has never 
studied, and which he never will study. Unmoved 
and undismayed by his ignorance of, let us say, 
ballistics, or ceramics, or Egyptian tombs, he is 
somehow able to introduce the reader to the books 
on these or countless other subjects. And somehow, 
particularly if the librarian does not pretend to un¬ 
due knowledge, the reader is often helped materially. 
He even feels grateful, and occasionally says so in 
print. (I pass over the times when he doesn’t.) 
One knows the backs of his books so well, and some¬ 
how has imbibed such a sense of their relative values, 
that the competent reference librarian becomes one 
of the most useful folk imaginable. 


6 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


It should not be forgotten, however, that this 
knowledge is one of method fully as much as of the 
books or their appearance. The reader is generally 
unfamiliar with the order in which the books have 
been arranged and the means employed to list them. 
It is the librarian’s intimate acquaintance with 
classification and cataloging which give him such 
an advantage over the reader in arriving quickly at 
desired books or information. You know the order 
in which your books fall. You know the ins and 
outs of your own catalog. You have at hand all 
manner of indexes and of catalogs of other libraries. 
So you give a man at once something to keep him 
occupied, while you hastily look up the things he 
really wants. And before he has time to thank you, 
you begin on the same process for half a dozen others. 
So it goes, day in and day out. Of course the backs 
of the books become familiar—you live with them. 
Of course it is easy to run down “aggravating ladies,” 
and others who have frequently changed their names 
in print. You do it all the time. Of course you 
know that the British Museum Catalog enters 
biographies under the name of the subject. That 
fact has helped you out of many a tight place. It is 
this intimate acquaintance with the tools of the 
trade which makes for speed and accuracy. And 
precisely those librarians whose memory for the 
actual volumes on their shelves is most retentive 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


7 


are likely to know best both their tools and the 
proper method of using them. If we can perform 
what seem to the uninitiated sleight of hand tricks 
with cards and books, it is because we know well 
catalogs, classification, indexes. In fact, a knowl¬ 
edge of the classification in force in the library in 
which you are working almost takes the place (for 
practical purposes) of knowledge of the contents of 
the books themselves. 

Let me illustrate this: A friend brought me what 
appeared to be a genuine manuscript letter of the 
German poet Schiller. It was addressed to his 
sister, and all in his handwriting. And yet it looked 
a trifle suspicious. Despite the appearance of age 
it had a little the air of a facsimile. But my friend 
thought it might be an original letter—it had been 
given to him as a valued possession. Now I am no 
Schiller scholar. I painfully waded through Wilhelm 
Tell in college, and once, even more painfully, con¬ 
ducted a class through Die Jungfrau von Orleans. 
I had never heard of Fritz Jonas’s celebrated edition 
of Schiller’s correspondence. But I did know where 
the Schiller books were, and that there was among 
them a set of volumes of letters. In three minutes 
I went to the place, found the authoritative-looking 
set, picked out the year and day of the letter, and 
discovered a footnote to the effect that some one 
had caused an admirable facsimile of this letter to 


8 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


be lithographed and that efforts were constantly 
being made to sell it as an original. 

Now, this incident will bear analysis. It is typical 
of much that goes on in our service. The query was 
not simple. But the means of answering it to the 
entire satisfaction of the inquirer were really primi¬ 
tive. They consisted merely in a knowledge that 
there was once a German poet named Schiller, that 
he had a place in our classification, that his books 
were shelved in a certain part of our stacks, and 
that, as a rule, editors arrange correspondence in 
chronological order. I knew no more about German 
poetry, or Schiller, or Schiller’s letters, when the 
transaction was over than when it began. But 
my friend—who is a man of much learning and—I 
may be pardoned for saying it—one of our foremost 
scientists, seems firmly convinced that I can find 
him anything in German literature which he wishes 
to know. You see on how slight a foundation of 
real knowledge one can and does perform his daily 
duties. The backs of books! How they help us! 
How well do little matters of shape, size, color, 
location, impress themselves indelibly upon us and 
aid us to earn our living! 

But precisely this facility in helping people to 
find things has too often a most unwholesome in¬ 
fluence on the librarian’s attitude toward the world 
of knowledge. It can not but tend to render him 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


9 


neglectful of that real and sound study hich alone 
gives fibre and substance to his mind. The numb¬ 
ing force of inertia must be reckoned with. We are 
all busy—too busy. We move along the lines of 
least resistance. We content ourselves with know¬ 
ing the backs of our books, with a familiarity with 
labels and groupings in lieu of ideas. Too soon 
you are likely to discover that executive work ab¬ 
sorbs the greater part of your powers. Too soon 
the habit of doing pretty well in your work without 
much reading and study becomes fixed. If you 
can recall titles easily, can locate desired informa¬ 
tion quickly, can send a reader to this or that place 
where his books are to be found, and meantime keep 
an eye on the needs of half a score of others, you 
begin unconsciously to think well of yourself and to 
ignore the fact that man does not live by bread alone. 

The wisest man I have ever been privileged to 
know once said to me: “You can be very useful. 
You can help a great many people. You can per¬ 
haps do a great work. But , if you stay in library 
work, your mind will be an intellectual rag-bag 
after ten years.” 

What is the remedy? Are we to be content with 
this “bowing acquaintance/' as Emerson called it, 
with the books on our shelves? Are we to be satis¬ 
fied with bright and parti-colored scraps of informa¬ 
tion, mental confetti? Are we as librarians, what- 


10 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


ever our own special branch of library work, to 
incur the just reproach of real ignorance of our wares? 
Is there any way we may escape the consequences 
of our calling, our undue outward familiarity with 
masses of books? 

It is, of course, impossible, even if it were wise, 
in this day of large libraries to recommend an effort 
to know the insides of all the books, or even of the 
better books, in our collections. They are too 
many even for the most indefatigable reader, to say 
nothing of the busy librarian. It is equally unwise 
to urge you to neglect the knowledge of titles and 
of classification, of the backs of your books. Culti¬ 
vate that by all means. It means bread and butter, 
whatever your particular function in a library. But 
by all means keep yourselves “sweet,*’ as our fathers 
used to say, by some intensive work which involves 
study. I have the greatest respect for the man with 
a hobby—even if he proves a nuisance at times. 
Without a hobby life is not worth living. You 
should have one—a real hobby which becomes 
vastly more important to you than any mere business 
can be. I would not prescribe the kind of hobby 
a librarian should ride. My advice, or any one’s 
else for that matter, would be unavailing. A hobby 
cometh not with understanding, any more than 
falling in love. But it is sometimes as happy a 
possession as a true help-meet, and occasionally as 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


11 


disastrous as an unfortunate marriage. A hobby 
which will refresh in your hours of weariness, attract 
when you are lazy, and inspire when you are worn, 
is precious beyond words. 

But a hobby, whether golf, or gardening, or bird- 
study, or collecting china, or any other like expensive 
and joyous pastime, is not enough to pull a busy 
librarian from the slough of inertia as regards books. 
Indeed, it may tend to keep him there, the more if 
he wisely takes to some sane supreme interest—out 
of doors. A line of study which is peculiarly your 
own will do more for you than you can possibly 
know at this stage of your careers. A small specialty 
which you have cultivated to the point where you 
know with almost complete fullness the literature 
of the topic is worth vastly more to you than the 
mere knowledge you acquire in it. The very fact 
of intensive study of a small topic keeps you in 
touch with methods and men, and is an admirable 
corrective to the scattering tendencies of our calling. 
I know a librarian who started in years ago reading 
everything he could on our Civil War. He kept it 
up amid purely executive duties until even specialists 
in military history now come to him for aid, and the 
government itself seeks his advice in matters of 
historical accuracy. He is concerned with the purely 
business side of a great library, but his extensive 
knowledge produced by steady reading has kept 


12 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


him in touch with the world of letters in a very vital 
way. The best man I know in matters economic 
and statistical knows also (purely as a side issue) 
more about English poetry, particularly the minor 
poets, than any professor of English I ever knew. 
And he is an active librarian, a graduate of a library 
school, and an “alumnus” of The New York Public 
Library. 

No librarian need despair, if only he sets inflexibly 
this goal before him, of attaining to productive 
scholarship. We recall Justin Winsor, who ad¬ 
ministered in able fashion two great libraries, and 
yet edited the Narrative and Critical History , to say 
nothing of other books; Dr. J. K. Hosmer whose 
array of volumes in English and American History 
is more than the product of mere industry, and whose 
Color Guard and Thinking Bayonet pulsate with the 
great struggle of the sixties; Reuben Gold Thwaites 
whose monument will be the Jesuit Relations rather 
than the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library; 
Dr. Poole who will live in his Index long after his other 
library labors at Yale, Cincinnati and Chicago are 
forgotten; and last, and greatest of all, Dr. John 
Shaw Billings, soldier, physician, author, director 
of great enterprises, yet a librarian who built up by 
incessant labor the greatest specialized library in 
the world, and then at an age when most men seek 
retirement, with unmatched patience, wisdom and 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


13 


zeal wrought The New York Public Library into an 
organic whole and housed it in this resplendent 
palace. With these men in mind—and others whom 
time fails me to mention—who of us shall be content 
with mere skill in technique, with mere facility of 
movement among printed things, with mere knowl¬ 
edge of the backs of books? 

I said I should probably fall into the habit of 
the preacher. Full well do I remember that pro¬ 
fessors of homiletics always urge that the sermon 
close with an “application.” Perhaps some of you 
are saying—“I am not to go into reference work. 
I am to be a cataloger, or to have charge of a branch 
library, or to aid in library extension. These warn¬ 
ings are not for me.” But they are for you, and for 
every one of us librarians. Whatever our peculiar 
part in library work, we can not escape the inevitable 
tendency to treat books as the mere vehicle on which 
we exercise our skill; we can not fail to gain a certain 
superficial exterior acquaintance with them. The 
longer we know and live with the backs of books, 
the more we shall need the tonic which comes from 
our own special line of research. Ordinarily, specia¬ 
lists grow narrow, but deep; librarians too often grow 
broad, but shallow. Begin now, therefore, when 
you are starting in to practice your profession, to 
cultivate intensively some one field. Hold to it as 
the years go by. Dig deeply and wisely into the 


14 


THE BACKS OF BOOKS 


accumulated store of wisdom which the ages have 
deposited in your little area. And give the world 
the ripened fruit you have grown. Thus will you 
give the lie to Mark Pattison’s often misapplied 
dictum: “The librarian who reads is lost.” 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY: SOME NOTES 
BY A STUDENT 1 


No other library has the associations, the history 
or the value of the famous collection of the Vatican. 
To no other spot do the longings of classical and 
historical scholars, of librarians, and of palaeogra¬ 
phers go out as to that secluded and long forbidden 
reading-room in the east arm of the palace of the 
Popes. We are accustomed to remember Tischen- 
dorf and his hasty notes made on cuffs and thumb¬ 
nails of readings of the chief treasure of that store¬ 
house of treasures, Codex B of the Old and New 
Testaments. Cardinal Mai and his mysterious 
“codices vaticani ,” whereof he alone knew the number 
and the worth, and a host of Catholic apologists 
with the archives at command have given an impres¬ 
sion of mysteriousness, of buried treasure, which 
remains long after the enlightened liberality of the 
present pontiff has thrown open to the learned world 
the Vatican collections with as free a hand as have 
the guardians of any library of the sort in Europe. 
Nor are the aspirations of the scholar lessened by 
the tales of his brethren; and even the disappointed 
and disgruntled tourists—“trippers” they call them 

1 Library Journal, March, 1900. 

15 


16 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


in Rome—spur him on with accounts of the few 
manuscripts which they have seen under glass in 
the grand halls and galleries through which they 
are shown, under the delusion that they are seeing 
the “library.” 

The doors of the plain cupboards under the bril¬ 
liantly frescoed walls shut from the tourist’s sight 
the thousands of parchment and paper manuscripts 
which compose the library. The Vatican collections 
are divided into the archives, the printed books, 
and the manuscripts. It is with the last of these 
alone that we have to do in this paper, although 
it should be said that the other departments are as 
freely opened to those with proper credentials as 
that of the manuscripts. 

To secure the privilege of the manuscript reading- 
room one has simply to come armed with proof that 
he is a person prepared to make use of the valuable 
documents in a proper way. With the introduction 
of the consul, or with other credentials, Americans 
have no difficulty in securing admission. Fortunately 
for the writer he was a member of the American 
School of Classical Studies in Rome; which fact insured 
a hearty welcome, for the Vatican authorities have 
been exceedingly kind in extending all possible cour¬ 
tesies to the School. During an almost constant 
attendance of some months I heard of no one who was 
refused the privileges of the library, and, in fact, I 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


17 


was frequently astonished at the extreme liberality 
of the management. 

It is a more difficult task to secure physical ad¬ 
mission than the written permission. Guards in 
various gaudy and somber uniforms bar the way 
with a polite but firm demand to know your business 
there. The words “Biblioteca,” or “Padre Ehrle” 
generally secure an instant salute and a polite 
direction. To a newcomer it is no easy task to 
make his way up staircases, across courts, and 
through galleries to the black, nail-studded door 
which bears a card requesting him not to enter but 
apply to another door in the garden for admission. 
If his Italian has carried him so far, however, he 
probably has courage enough left to believe that 
this sign is for the thousands of tourists who throng 
this gallery several times a week on their way to the 
Appartamenti Borgia, and pushes on. Once inside, 
a polite and deferential porter receives his hat and 
cane. He generally keeps on his outer coat, if he is 
wise, for to the northerner these enormous palaces 
of Italy are damp and dangerous. And as he has 
climbed over 160 steps from the Piazza San Pietro 
he is usually so warm that he fears the chill of an 
unheated room. 

The vestibule to the reading-room in older times 
was the reading-room itself. Two dark wooden 
counters down the sides, flanked by equally dark 


18 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


and tightly closed bookcases or lockers, create a gloom 
which the one window would not much relieve were 
it not for the numerous portraits of former cardinal 
librarians which deck the walls of vestibule and 
reading-room. By this window is generally seated 
a woman at work on some manuscript, for women 
are not admitted to the sacred precincts of the read¬ 
ing-room itself. In return, however, for this treat¬ 
ment the feminine student gets the best light in the 
place. It will interest Americans to know that the 
wife of one of our best-known librarians was the 
second woman to secure the privilege of studying 
the Vatican manuscripts. 

The reading-room, which is entered through green 
baize doors, is a rectangle, nearly twice as long as 
it is broad, high, of course, and lighted by two large 
windows on the north side. Between them Father 
Ehrle, S.J., the justly famous guardian of these 
treasures, has his desk. In the long cassock and 
black biretta of his order he presides with kindly 
interest over the readers. Apparently he speaks 
with ease all the languages of modern Europe, and 
his courtesy and good humor seem unfailing. Parel- 
lel to the shorter side of the room are four long tables, 
each with 12 chairs and racks for manuscripts. 
Across the end of the room opposite the entrance is a 
raised platform with seats upholstered in red. These 
are intended, I suppose, for the officials, for I saw 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


19 


using them only priests and two of the so-called 
scriptores of the library. All the furniture is of 
plain dark wood. On the east side opposite the 
windows are ranged the ponderous tomes of the in¬ 
ventory and catalogs. Near the door is a small 
counter, behind which an attendant sits to receive 
the applications for manuscripts and to keep the 
tallies. He has one or two assistants who bring 
the documents to him. 

The library consists, as is well known, of about 
26,000 manuscripts, divided roughly by languages 
into 19,000 Latin, 4000 Greek, and 2000 Oriental. 
These figures do not include the archives nor the 
library of some 100,000 printed volumes kept on a 
lower story. In this sum-total are included, how¬ 
ever, the various smaller collections as well as those 
known simply as codices vaticani. There is an in¬ 
ventory which describes every numbered manu¬ 
script, but the great catalogs (in manuscript) are 
exceedingly defective. The catalog of Greek manu¬ 
scripts, for example, was made over a century ago, 
and a short use of it soon drove me to the inventory. 
The smaller collections have been cataloged, and 
these catalogs have been well printed, although since 
the Palatine manuscripts which were returned to 
Heidelberg have been described in the Palatine cata¬ 
log without separation or discriminating marks in 
the index, one is occasionally caught asking for one 


20 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


of these absentees. It is also delightful, even some¬ 
what uncanny, to receive back your slip, as I once 
did, marked in blue pencil, “manca del 1682/ — 
“missing since 1682.” Accordingly if one wishes 
to be certain that he has seen all the manuscripts 
of a certain author in the Vatican, he must search 
laboriously through the inventory. Some unlucky 
chap may generally be seen at this task. A friend 
of mine spent three weeks and a half looking through 
the inventory of Latin manuscripts in search of a 
complete list of manuscripts of Pliny’s Letters, to be 
rewarded with two not previously published. Prof. 
Wm. G. Hale four years ago discovered a new 
manuscript of Catullus in the same way. 

The prospective reader takes his papers to Father 
Ehrle, and is by him required to write his name and 
address in a book, together with the particular sub¬ 
ject he wishes to investigate. He then discovers 
the number of his manuscript and fills out in dupli¬ 
cate an application blank, of half of which a reduced 
copy is printed on page 21. 

The attendant—who must in some cases walk 
nearly a quarter of a mile in making the trip to and 
fro—brings him his manuscript. At the time he 
leaves, a receipt in duplicate is made out at the 
bottom of the same slip, of which one copy is re¬ 
tained by the library and one by the reader. In 
case he wishes to consult the same manuscript the 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


21 


next day, it is retained for him at the desk. Before 
leaving the room he must obtain a ticket to show to 
the porter. This is given him by the man who re¬ 
ceipts for the manuscript, and so equal justice is 
done to both librarian and reader. I ought to add 
that the attendants are exceedingly courteous, 
prompt, and obliging. In no other library anywhere 
have I met with more hearty, prompt—considering 
the distances—and polite service. It seldom takes 
more than 10 minutes to secure a manuscript after 
the slip has been made out—and none are so near 
the desk as the remoter books in any ordinary lib¬ 
rary, while many are at great distances. 

BIBLIOTECA VATICANA. 


N°. d’Ord. 

05657 





II sottoscritto dichiara aver ricevuto dal Prefetto della 
Biblioteca Vaticana (o da chi per esso) 


[Signature] 


Li 

II Ricevitore 


II sottoscritto dichiara aver retirato sopra descritto articolo. 
Li 18 


Per il Prefetto 

[Signature] 





22 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


The readers would afford an inviting study to an 
artist. All nations of Europe seem represented. 
When the German universities have their recess 
between semesters in the spring the place is full. 
One may see half a dozen or more black cassocks, the 
high hat of the Greek priest, and a collection of 
beards and costumes such as can be gathered only in 
Rome. Occasionally a famous editor or professor 
is pointed out by some German student, and there 
are always at hand the men who do hack work at 
transcribing or collating. Yet one may work for 
days beside a man and know nothing of him until 
later he sees in print the work which his neighbor 
has done. In midwinter and late spring the room 
is only half full. Many readers come so frequently 
that their little peculiarities become well known to 
the habitues. The most entertaining was a little 
old gentleman who used to go to sleep regularly 
and then wake up when he snored. 

It is exasperating to a librarian to see the careless 
manner in which many of the readers handle the 
manuscripts. They are generally bound in full 
morocco, russia, or pigskin, and very solidly bound, 
too, so that they will stand some rough usage. But 
it is almost incredible that ink should be used so 
carelessly over and near the manuscripts. Of course 
care is taken to allow only well-known scholars to 
use the rarest manuscripts, and some are simply 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


23 


not to be had, as is only right, because of their 
fragility. The amount of noise which a few men 
make in the room is also a source of annoyance to 
a librarian. But even noise is better than the signs 
proclaiming silence displayed in some of our own 
libraries. 

The reading-room is closed on Sundays, of course, 
and on Thursdays also, as well as on numerous 
saints’ days. Between the end of June and the 
middle of October it is not open at all. The hours 
are from nine to one in the fall and winter, and from 
eight to twelve in spring. These seem short hours, 
but when one has put in four hours over a crabbed 
Irish, Saxon or Visigothic handwriting, or worse 
still, on a 15 th century Greek theological w r ork, he 
is glad of an excuse to stop. And on departing, 
if he is wise, he first goes to the window of the long 
gallery and looks north to see if perchance 

“alta stet nive candidum Soracte,” 

as old Horace has it; and if that good luck befall 
him not, he gazes across the city on the Sabines with 
Monte Gennaro towering over all. Then he slowly 
passes down the long gallery, where 6000 inscriptions 
invite him to linger, and here he reads a pompous 
epitaph or two, with about as much truth in them 
probably as epitaphs generally possess, or learns 
how the custode of the column of Marcus Aurelius 


24 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


got a permit to build him a house with government 
timber, or possibly he meditates on the simple 
words in pace on the memorial slab of some humble 
Christian, until even this longest of galleries comes 
to an end, and the sunshine of the Damascene court 
brings him back to modern Rome and a consciousness 
of lunch-time. 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY: TWENTY-FIVE 
YEARS AFTER 1 


Old frequenters of the Eternal City are fond of 
decrying the changes which the needs of the modern 
capital of Italy have brought in their favorite haunts. 
The ancient and picturesque rambling town has 
become an ugly and noisy city, they will tell you, 
and its former quiet charm has vanished. Changes 
there have been in plenty, if not progress, and even 
the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana has not escaped. 

But the changes at the Vatican Library seem 
wholly desirable and happy. Begun by Father 
Ehrle before he was raised to the cardinalate and 
finished by the present Pope while still he was 
Monsignore Ratti, these improvements have made 
the Vatican one of the most comfortable and con¬ 
venient workshops for scholars to be found anywhere. 
The printed books and the manuscripts have been 
brought close together, so that access to one brings 
with it convenient approach to the other. The 
new reading room for manuscripts is light, well- 
ventilated and eminently comfortable. The manu¬ 
scripts themselves are brought to it by electric book- 
lifts, being housed directly beneath the reading room 


1 April, 1924. 


25 


26 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


itself, thus rendering the time lost in getting a manu¬ 
script a negligible quantity. The service is prompt 
and most courteous. This is no change in spirit, 
but a vast change in the means of service. 

The approach to the Library is now from the west 
side, not far from the entrance to the Picture Gallery. 
One may still come in, if furnished with a pass, 
through the Court of Damasus, thus avoiding the 
long journey around St. Peter’s. But most readers 
ride to the Library and walk away, for the chill of 
the Vatican itself has grown no less with the years. 
There is an amusing routine—I had almost said 
ritual—of entrance. Furnished, after proper in¬ 
troduction as of old, with a permit bearing a pass¬ 
port photograph, the intending reader signs his 
name in a register, noting the hour of entry and the 
subject of his study. The line on which he writes 
bears a number. He then turns in his permit to 
the guard who gives him in return a key bearing 
the same number. Entering and crossing a pleasant 
court the reader arrives in an ante-room where he 
discovers that his key opens a locker in which he 
may leave his hat and coat and lock them up in 
safety. Then he passes through the library of 
printed books to the manuscript reading rooms, 
where he turns in the key with his written request 
for a manuscript, receiving it back once more when 
he turns in the manuscript at the end of his stay. 


THE VATICAN LIBRARY 


27 


He then reverses the process and finally after noting 
the hour and minute of his departure he exchanges 
the key for his permit, which allows him to take the 
short cut back to the Piazza di San Pietro, if he 
wishes to go that way. It is a rather amusing proc¬ 
ess, but most sensible and really very just to both 
the Library and the reader. 

The printed books—on open shelves—have been 
collected with the aim of aiding research in the manu¬ 
scripts. They are well arranged and admirably 
cataloged. One may bring to his table in the read¬ 
ing room for manuscripts as many printed books as 
he needs, and may keep them some days if he desires. 
There is the minimum of formality and the maximum 
of helpfulness. The catalogs are progressing—the 
first volume of a new series of the Greek manuscripts 
has just been issued. 

Altogether, the Vatican Library is as good a place 
to work as any known to me so far as conveniences 
go—and it is the greatest storehouse of mediaeval 
book manuscripts in the world. Its guardians have 
deserved well of the republic of letters. Following 
the liberal policy of Leo XIII they have not only 
opened its treasures to scholars with entire freedom, 
but they have done everything possible to make 
their work easy and rapid. It should perhaps be 
noted as not the least of the changes of a quarter 
century that women are no longer relegated to the 
ante-room, but now have the same privileges as men. 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 1 


The chief book marts of Europe are an old story 
to veteran collectors. In London, Paris, Berlin, 
Leipzig they have their favorite haunts or trusted 
agents. Pleasant memories of hours in quaint and 
and musty stalls, in bright and business-like shops, 
and in gloomy and cavernous storehouses recur as 
one of them names these cities, or fondles the trea¬ 
sures acquired in each. And to the younger ama¬ 
teur whose experiences have not led him as yet into 
these happy hunting-grounds of his chosen pastime, 
the peculiarities of the great centres, the names of 
the great dealers, and the possible results of searches 
in the minor shops have become well-worn and 
familiar themes. 

Rome and the other Italian cities are not so well 
known as fields for the harvest of old and rare books. 
And truly they have been stripped sadly of their 
treasures by greedy agents and skilful collectors. 
One can still glean here after the reapers to no small 
advantage, however, despite the ravages of the 
spoilers of Italy in this as in many more important 
matters. There are three or four firms in Rome, 
mostly Germans, whose catalogs find their way 

1 From The Bookman, January, 1901. 

28 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


29 


even to America, and they control, of course, the 
best things in the local market. With them dealers 
and bibliophiles are familiar, and I do not propose 
to exploit their wares. It is of opportunities for 
the individual book-hunter, especially for him of 
limited purse and unlimited zeal, that I propose 
to write. Nor do I wish to go into the matter of 
auctions, which in Rome, as generally elsewhere, 
result from the death of some collector or dealer. 
It is enough to say that there are a few each year, 
and that important sales are heralded widely and 
attended by agents of all the important European 
houses. 

There is no particular quarter in Rome where the 
booksellers congregate. There are more of them in 
in the crowded district between the Corso and the 
Tiber, south of the Via dei Pontifici and north of 
the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele than anywhere else, 
although they are to be found between the Corso 
and the Quirinal, on the Via Nazionale, and even on 
the Esquiline. One runs on them in the most un¬ 
expected places, and they range from the large and 
well-appointed collections of the German firms to 
a few dozen books strung along the sunny side of 
a church. And none of them is to be despised, for 
one never knows what may turn up in them. I 
purchased a very early Giunta out of a basket of 
popular songs and dream books in a sunny corner 


30 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


once, while a friend of mine one day picked up the 
life of the first Bishop of Connecticut from a similar 
heap alongside the Church of St. Andrea delle Frate. 

One of the sights of Rome is the market or fair, 
sometimes dubbed “rag fair” by tourists, which 
takes place every Wednesday in the Campo di 
Fiori. Here, where Bruno was burned and where his 
bronze statue now stands, are gathered vendors of 
every imaginable article, not omitting books. The 
smaller dealers send a cart-load of books to the fair 
on Wednesdays, and many a pawnbroker and rag 
picker adds his contribution to their more respectable 
wares. Books of every conceivable sort and value 
are displayed on rough tables and in carts, while a 
crowd jostles all day around them. One should 
have good care of his pocket-book and a gift for 
good-natured bargaining if he would buy at the 
Campo di Fiori, and to secure anything of value he 
must rise betimes, for the agents of the more im¬ 
portant houses skim the cream of the market at its 
first opening. 

The “fly-by-night”bookshop is not infrequently 
discovered. Some dealer in old junk, some pur¬ 
chaser of an estate, or some shrewd bookseller with 
a small income rents a store on a busy street for 
two or three weeks, attracts a crowd by posters and 
signs, sells out his stock and is gone before you have 
become accustomed to finding him there. Most of 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


31 


of his wares are veritable trash, but if the hunter 
has the fortune to arrive soon after the place opens, 
he may make some finds. It is always wise to be 
on the lookout for these birds of passage. 

Occasionally one comes across a small bottega, where 
a dealer displays such of his wares as he wishes to 
dispose of or thinks will sell, while a magazzino be¬ 
hind is carefully sealed from inquiring eyes. Chanc¬ 
ing to enter such a place near the Chamber of Depu¬ 
ties one day I was ignominiously turned out of the back 
room, piled nearly to the ceiling with books. Nor could 
any representations or entreaties change the deter¬ 
mination of the owner. “Signore, if you wish any 
of these books, buy; but no one enters my magazzino. 
Yes, you Americans are very practical, but it is my 
custom.” Another time, however, a different ex¬ 
cuse kept me from the storeroom. It was beneath 
a church, and the wares above tempted me to ex¬ 
plore. But no. “The signore is without doubt an 
American, a heretic! A thousand pardons! He 
cannot come in here. The good fathers would turn 
me out forever.’ 7 Then, confidentially, “Only tell 
me what you want, and I’ll bring it out.” And so 
he did; a very early edition of Josephus it was, too, 
well worth the trouble, to say nothing of the fun. 

Perhaps the richest of all these shops to the in¬ 
quisitive collector is a shabby corner near the Collegio 
Romano, where a large fat man and his short fat 


32 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


wife keep a sort of clearing-house for old books. 
Where they buy them, no one can guess, but new 
stock constantly makes its appearance, is culled over, 
sold at a small price, and then the remnant goes for 
old paper. It is haunted, this shop, by priests, col¬ 
lectors and students, and the jovial proprietor seems 
to cater equally to the schoolboy who is looking 
for an arthmetic and to the lover of Aldines and old 
bindings. Such bargains as may occasionally be 
met here will tempt the book lover to take his after¬ 
noon walk pretty constantly in this direction. 

I might run on indefinitely about these curious 
old shops, but what of their contents? Most of the 
books are the veriest trash, more discouraging to a 
book lover than any accumulations he ever saw in 
this land. But there is much to attract the student, 
the bibliophile, and any one interested in the history 
of printing and what I may call “commercial” bind¬ 
ing. An Aldine is an Aldine, whether it be a first 
edition or no, and a Stephanus or Froben or Gryp- 
phus may be equally illustrative of the work of 
those houses, whether it be a most ordinary work or 
a famous rarity. It is some satisfaction to own a book 
printed in Italics, or in his famous Greek type, 
under the eye of the first Aldus himself, by his son 
at Rome, or by old Luca Antonino, the founder of 
the Giunta family. And it is a pleasure to get a 
few fifteenth-century works even if they are not 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


33 


famous or remarkable. The clear-cut type, the 
firm, heavy paper, the ink, black as when the sheets 
were pulled from the press, of these fifteenth-century 
books make one heartily weary of pulp papers and 
inks that fade with the very printing. 

Of the old books, strangely enough, works on 
canon law and the decretals seem to be the most 
numerous. Next come editions of the classics and 
hosts of sixteenth-century tractates of all shapes 
and sizes. Greek books are scarce, but Latin ones 
are too numerous to excite attention. Italian 
literature naturally holds the first place, with Cantu 
in a succession of voluminous editions most in evi¬ 
dence. French and Spanish books come next, while 
English and German ones are almost unknown ex¬ 
cept at one or two shops which make a specialty of 
them. 

Of the early and famous printers, the Germans 
are but slightly represented, and the same thing is 
true of the Dutch and English presses. French and 
Swiss publishers divide the field with those of Italy. 
One exception should be made in favor of the Plantin 
Press, of Antwerp, examples of whose work are 
easily secured. The extraordinary number of the 
printing presses of Northern Italy, especially at 
Venice and Florence, before the baneful work of the 
Index and the Inquisition ruined publishers and 
authors, and stayed the flood of books, can best be 


34 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


appreciated by the remnants of their work which 
still crowd the stalls and shops in Rome. Elzevirs 
seem not to have found their way south in large 
numbers, or possibly they have all been purchased 
and do not often get into the shops. 

A word as to prices. They will vary most un¬ 
accountably with the shop, the temper of the dealer, 
and the linguistic ability of the purchaser, together 
with such indications of the length of his purse as 
the dealer can gather from the dress, equipage or 
manner of his customer. Such a thing as a fixed 
price exists in only one or two shops. A knowledge 
of Italian, and the ability to make ever so poor a 
joke will reduce the price in an extraordinary fashion, 
just as broken French and a hasty temper will in¬ 
crease it and hold it fast to its extravagant size. As 
a rule, fifteenth-century books of any sort cost from 
twenty-five to fifty francs, and if they are finely bound 
or in good condition the ultimate price will not be 
far from one hundred francs at the least. For later 
books it is all a matter of chance, of knowledge of 
their true value on the dealer’s part, and of persis¬ 
tence on the purchaser’s. He may get his treasure 
for a few coppers, or he may pay twice its value. 
He must mercanteggiare , “bargain,” however much 
he may dislike to do so, unless he be a Croesus or 
a fool. 

In Rome one may revel in parchment bindings of 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


35 


all sorts. Few other leathers have been used to any 
great extent. Much of the work is extremely plain, 
merely a half or full parchment binding with letter¬ 
ing in ink. Occasionally, however, a fine specimen 
of tooling will turn up; and if it does not bear the 
arms of some pope or cardinal it generally can be 
got cheaply enough. Books bound for the popes, 
with the tiara, keys and arms of the pontiff in gilding 
on the sides sell at round prices, but cardinals have 
been so much more common that their armorial 
bearings and cardinal hats are not so highly rated, 
unless the work is inlaid in morocco. There are 
certain characteristics which very clearly distinguish 
the bindings of different epochs, and these soon 
become so familiar to the book-hunter that he passes 
over late works without inspecting them carefully, 
unless the paper betrays an old book in a later 
binding. 

Not infrequently you may come across books in 
these stalls in which the name of the author or editor, 
of the publisher, and even of the place of printing, 
has been blotted or cut out. Occasionally the at¬ 
tempt has been a failure, and the poorer ink used to 
blot out the name has faded, leaving the printer's ink 
still visible. These names so ruthlessly concealed 
were those of heretics, generally Swiss or Germans. 
No one dared to expose these books for sale or to 
own them without this precaution, and probably 


36 


BOOK-HUNTING IN ROME 


also the permission of the ecclesiastical authorities. 
I have books in which the names of Erasmus, Beatus 
Rhenanus, and the publisher Froben are so treated, 
and I have seen literally hundreds of others. In most 
cases the objectionable person was simply an editor 
or publisher. When he supplied the subject-matter 
also, his books were more summarily dealt with, as 
he would have been could he have been caught. 

Rome, them, is by no means a wholly barren and 
despoiled field for the collector who loves to gather 
himself the books which he puts on his shelves. She 
may not yield to the wealthy collector of almost price- 
ess rarities any returns for his pains in searching, but 
the more modest and humbler lover of old volumes 
will find the old city a rich and profitable source of 
pleasure . 2 

2 The above was written in 1900. The change twenty-five years 
later is most marked. The Great War has ruthlessly swept away 
most of the small book-shops of Rome. The after-effects of the 
war were hard on small dealers everywhere, but book-dealers in 
particular, unless they had large capital, have simply gone to the wall 
in the Italian cities. Otherwise—with the inevitable change in 
prices—the description still fits, and the book-hunting traveller 
will find much to reward him in the shops of Rome. 


SHOULD THE LIBRARIAN BE A 
BIBLIOPHILE ? 1 - 2 


To state this question is almost the same thing 
as to answer it. A librarian who is not a lover of 
books is indeed a sorry specimen of his kind. But 
of late years the term bibliophile has gathered to 
itself certain associations which have somewhat 
obscured its real meaning; in the popular mind it is 
now generally applied only to those persons whose 
love for books has taken the form of a mania for works 
of a certain rarity or of a limited and strictly fictitious 
value. If the words collector and bibliophile are 
to be considered as interchangeable; if the biblio¬ 
phile is to be thought of only as the man in whose 
eyes an uncut first edition in the original blue paper 
wrappers is worth ten times as much as the same 
book when it has delighted the eye of its owner and 
imparted its contents to his mind; if he alone is a 
bibliophile who is a bibliomaniac, then by all means 
librarians, as all other people of wholesome and 
well-balanced character should strive to guard them¬ 
selves from bibliomania as from an insidious and 
dangerous disease. 

1 Read a a meeting of the Long Island Library Club, February 21, 
1902. 

2 Library Journal , March, 1902. 

37 


38 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


But if by a bibliophile we mean one who truly 
loves books, in whose eyes a badly made book, a 
badly bound book, and a badly illustrated book are 
alike an abomination, one who loves a book not only 
for its form, but for its content, one who knows the 
history and technique of the art of printing, one 
whose books are his friends and companions, his 
inspiration and his solace, then by all means should 
the librarian be a bibliophile. And if we may read 
into the term, as without unduly stretching it I 
think we may, an idea of a man who values books 
because they contain the goodly heritage of past 
ages, because from them and from them alone we 
learn how to interpret that daily experience which 
our contact with human nature brings to each one 
of us, then indeed to become a bibliophile is not only 
an attainment to be desired, but a goal to be striven 
for. 

My answer to this question might perhaps stop 
here. There are, however, certain considerations 
which induce me to continue the discussion further. 
I think few will deny that on the part of a great 
many of our American librarians there is a lack of 
equipment for work on the historical and artistic side 
of their calling. There may be good reasons for 
this state of things, but still I think, disregarding 
the reasons, that it is clear to anyone whose observa¬ 
tion has been at all extended that here we have paid 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


39 


but little attention to what I am disposed to call the 
higher and finer duties of our profession. There are 
too few of us who feel competent to attack problems 
involving a minute knowledge not alone of the 
history of book-making, but even of such allied sub¬ 
jects as the political and economic history of Europe 
in the Renaissance period. There are not many 
among our number who could lend intelligent aid, 
say to a historian seeking information on the Spanish 
colonies in the West Indies, from what few original 
sources our libraries might have. How many of us 
feel ourselves reasonably well fitted to draw up a 
scheme for the careful preservation and at the same 
time the ready consultation of manuscripts deposited 
with us? If a bundle of letters of General Washing¬ 
ton, or some manuscript diaries of President Madison, 
or the account books of General Scott, or a set of 
letters describing life in Alaska in 1899 were brought 
to us, how many of us would feel competent to pre¬ 
pare them for publication and to arrange for their 
proper preservation? Supposing a collection of rare 
and beautiful Italian books of the fifteenth century 
should be given to the library, is there someone at 
hand able to collate them, to catalog them, to say 
nothing of publishing a description of them which 
would be a lamp to the feet of scholars the world 
over? Have we many librarians equipped to dis¬ 
tinguish between a true and a counterfeit Aldine, 


40 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


to describe the earmarks of “contemporary binding,” 
or to tell with reasonable accuracy the date of a 
Greek or Latin manuscript at a glance? 

Nay, more than these things, which may seem to 
some matters of rather remote possibility, have all 
our librarians the ability to tell good from poor 
paper, to distinguish between different grades of 
morocco and other leathers? Can we all tell how 
a book should be sewed and berate the binder when 
he fails, with the perversity of his kind, to follow 
directions? JDo we know the difference between 
good printing and bad. Can we appreciate that 
proper registration, clear and beautiful type, and 
serviceable bindings are more truly artistic than the 
combination of heavy and ugly type poorly set, 
muddy ink, and imitation chamois skin binding 
which now beguiles the innocent purchaser of sup¬ 
posedly “artistic” books—sent him “on approval,” 
without request? And lastly are there many of us 
who know intimately the history of the finer and 
more expensive sorts of book making, who love the 
books into whose making has gone the devoted skill 
of artist and printer and binder? 

That we have in the ranks of the librarian's calling 
not a few persons competent to do many of these 
things, and some able to do all of them—and vastly 
more—is undoubtedly true. But I fear that we 
we can hardly go on to say that the majority of 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


41 


those engaged in library work have any such quali¬ 
fications. We are all aware that the great develop¬ 
ment in library work in America has been along two 
lines, first, the betterment and growth of the free 
public circulating library, and second, an increase 
in the material ease of handling books and making 
them quickly accessible to the reader. The number 
and size of our free libraries, the enormous quantity 
of books circulated from them, the magnificent and 
well-planned buildings recently erected, the mechani¬ 
cal devices for protection against fire and for com¬ 
pact housing of books, the card catalog system, our 
convenient, if not altogether logical, systems of 
classification, together with a host of accessory aids 
to the promotion of reading and the circulation of 
books; these form at once the chief pride of our 
American librarians and their chief contribution 
to the science of librarianship. We have passed 
through a period of training in the last quarter 
century. Our energies have been given to the 
material side of our work, and we have no cause to 
be ashamed of our results. But we may well pause 
for an instant to inquire seriously whether we have 
done all that we might have done, and whether new 
conditions are not facing us at the present moment. 

Those of us who are at all familiar with some of 
the great libraries of Europe are perfectly well aware 
that they as a rule are conducted on an altogether 


42 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


different basis from most of our own. We are not 
a little disposed to ridicule the library in which the 
card catalog is unknown, or one in which a student 
must occasionally wait forty-eight hours after leav¬ 
ing a request for books before obtaining them. But 
true librarianship does not consist in standard sizes 
or pneumatic tubes. We have not been wrong in 
thinking that our collections must be made available 
by every device in our power; but we have not al¬ 
ways had strong collections. When we contrast our 
best libraries with those of Europe, we are painfully 
aware of the fact that the European institutions 
have been in the field for some hundreds of years 
longer than we have. As a consequence, training 
for librarianship with them involves a study of 
palaeography, for they have manuscript treasures; 
it involves a knowledge of the history of printing, 
for their collections exemplify that history; it in¬ 
volves learning and scholarship, for their libraries 
are the resort of scholars and of the leading men in 
all professions. 

Now I think that we may safely say that with us 
the period of emphasis on the expansion of the cir¬ 
culating library only has come to an end. We shall 
not circulate fewer books, but more; we shall not 
have fewer branches and delivery stations, but more; 
we shall not cease from our missionary activities, 
on the contrary, we shall doubtless increase them 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 43 

in ways undreamed of at present. But the very 
state where the belief in the civilizing mission of the 
book is strongest, the state whose Free Library 
Commission sends out reports of the work of its 
travelling libraries which can hardly be read without 
emotion, this state has just erected for its State His¬ 
torical Society a magnificent building to shelter a 
collection of manuscripts and books which illuminate 
the early history of the entire northwest. In our 
own city, 3 soon to be provided as a result of Mr. 
Carnegie’s generosity with unexcelled facilities for 
the circulation of books through free libraries, there 
are growing great collections of incunabula, of 
Americana, of works on architecture, not to mention 
a host of others. We need only glance at a few of the 
great libraries of the country from Boston to Washing¬ 
ton and from New York to Chicago to see that the 
day of specialization, of more rounded collections, 
and of great reference libraries has truly dawned. 
We have reached a point where libraries are receiving 
endowments, and where a distinct purpose exists 
on the part of trustees to further research. 

It may not be known to all of us to how remarkable 
an extent American collectors of wealth have been 
purchasing manuscripts, incunabula and rare books 
in Europe in the past two decades. In the natural 


3 New York. 


44 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


course of things the greater part of these collections 
will in time find their way from private hands to 
the shelves of libraries. Witness the collections of 
Mr. Ayer and Mr. Brown in the field of Americana, 
as recent examples, to say nothing of a score of 
others. Within easy reach of a student in New 
York City it is now possible to find no small amount 
of first hand material for the study of both Greek 
and Latin palaeography, while a great amount of 
material of this sort may be expected in the future. 
Papyri are already finding their way to America in 
large quantities, owing to American assistance in 
financing the recent explorations in Egypt. 

If it is once granted that we have arrived at this 
new stage in library progress, I think it will scarcely 
be disputed that the bibliographic, the scholarly, the 
historical side of their work must in the future en¬ 
gage the careful attention of a far greater number 
of librarians'than it has, with us, in the past. In 
libraries created for special purposes, or containing 
large collections on special topics, works illustrating 
the history of those subjects must be gathered in 
large quantities. These cannot properly be handled 
in any other spirit than that of the true bibliophile. 
While for bibliographic purposes the matters which 
lend an adventitious value to a book are scarcely 
worth noting, it yet remains true that one gifted 
with the knowledge and trained in the arts of the 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


45 


bibliophile will alone succeed in cataloging and classi¬ 
fying books whose value lies in their rarity, in the 
peculiar circumstances of their manufacture, or in 
the form in which they are preserved. There are 
therefore likely to be greater inducements for libra¬ 
rians to qualify themselves properly to handle rare 
books, manuscripts, and illustrative material in the 
future than there have been in the past. 

It would indeed be a sad day which should find our 
library world divided into two camps. If those 
who serve a limited public and those who serve the 
greater masses should fail to recognize their mutual 
obligations and their mutual dependence, much 
would disappear which now goes to make pleasant 
and profitable the work of the profession. To recog¬ 
nize distinctly and to appreciate fully the missionary 
effort of the public library are required equally of 
all of us. May we not find in the spirit of the biblio¬ 
phile one of the bonds which shall hold firmly together 
the members of our calling now rapidly differentiat¬ 
ing to such a degree that we are obliged to flock by 
ourselves in a yearly increasing number of sections? 
May we not properly and confidently ask of our 
brethren of the public library, of the branch library, 
and of the delivery station, that they shall love the 
beautiful in books, that they shall care for the fine 
samples of early printing, and that they shall strive 
to educate their immediate constituents to some 


46 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


appreciation of these things? And may we not bid 
the cataloger or classifier deep in the problems of 
transliteration from the Slavic or the proper subor¬ 
dination of a special class under the general heading 
turn for a while from his labor and consider the 
beauty of the fine old Baskerville he has just put 
down? May we not confidently urge that the 
historical side of bibliography and the deliberate 
formation of collections which shall show the his¬ 
tory of at least one subject be encouraged in every 
library of any size? 

There are some very practical applications to be 
made of these theoretical views. The busy desk 
attendant or children’s librarian may think that these 
remarks are not meant for her. I think otherwise. 
It is in just these cases that they do apply. I do 
not mean that a long line of waiting applicants 
should be delayed while the desk attendant delivers 
a lecture on the superiority of morocco over sheep 
in bindings, or that bibliographic treasures should 
be turned over to children. But the “trivial round 
and common task” when steadfastly pursued are 
likely to result in both exhaustion and stagnation. 
A fine enthusiasm for old books, for fine books, for 
beautiful books, will be one stimulus which can 
generally be indulged in with ease and with safety. 
Moreover, I firmly believe that only those who have 
tried it know what an interest a bibliographic exhibit 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


47 


may arouse among the frequenters even of a small 
branch library. Such exhibitions are not impossible, 
yet they require some little knowledge on the part of 
the attendants who explain them even when labelled 
in the most effective fashion. 

Librarians who have charge of small collections 
and whose funds are limited have especial need of 
the training and the enthusiasm of the bibliophile. 
They are far too prone to believe that they can in¬ 
dulge in nothing so expensive as fine editions and 
good bindings. To any one who knows the possi¬ 
bilities of the auction and second-hand market of this 
city such beliefs are groundless. A succession of 
reasonably low bids placed with reliable auctioneers 
will produce results which will astonish those who 
have bought only of agents. Moreover no one 
knows how much good a few well bound books of 
fine quality will do. Few people will abuse a fine 
book, while almost anyone is careless with a paper- 
covered and poorly printed one. A librarian of a 
small library who will investigate second-hand 
stores and will persistently study auction catalogs 
can soon acquire book treasures. 

In addition we may, it seems to me, make much 
more of such fine specimens of the printer’s art or 
other treasures as we possess in all our libraries. I 
am a firm believer in the value of such things when 
exhibited with suitable explanatory labels. I well 


48 


THE LIBRARIAN A BIBLIOPHILE 


remember the effect of on my own imagination of a 
few huddled and carelessly labelled old books and 
manuscripts placed in a show case in a wretched light 
in the public library I frequented as a boy. Had 
they been shown in an attractive manner and with 
full, clear, and elementary notes, I have no doubt 
that they would have had a vastly greater influence. 
It is hardly possible to lay too much stress on effective 
explanation in such matters. If our heads of libra¬ 
ries will endeavor to show what they have of beauti¬ 
ful, rare, and costly volumes and bindings, and will 
at the same time encourage on the part of their 
assistants a devotion to the beautiful in books, 
we shall all of us have taken a long step forward in 
the direction of a larger and truer librarianship. 


A DECADE OF LIBRARY PROGRESS IN 
AMERICA 1 


Among the many gatherings of specialists which 
were held in connection with the Chicago Exposition 
in 1893 was an International Congress of Librarians. 
The account of its sessions appeared, in the usual 
belated manner of government publications, in the 
Report of the Commissioner of Education some 
three years later. The American Library Associa¬ 
tion has just held another similar international con¬ 
gress for the St. Louis Fair. It seems a fitting time, 
in view of this event, to set forth as well as may 
be in brief compass the events which have made the 
ten years which have elapsed since the World’s Fair 
at Chicago a memorable decade in the history of 
American libraries. 

It was a saying of President Garfield’s that Ameri¬ 
can education runs too much to bricks and mortar. 
A biting sting of truth lies in these words, truth 
which applies but too well to the library world in 
common with that of education. It is perhaps a 
national failing to exalt the visible and tangible, 
and to ignore the subtle and unseen work of culture 
and study. Undoubtedly the average man will turn 

1 Popular Science Monthly, December, 1904 (vol. 66, 131-138). 

49 


50 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


to the new buildings which have been reared in this 
decade for his criterion of progress in library affairs. 
They form, it must be said, a notable addition to 
the list of public buildings of merit in the country. 

Perhaps it is not too much to say that the modern 
American library is a new architectural type. Con¬ 
ditions peculiarly our own, many of them the direct 
result of American innovations in planning library 
work, have produced a kind of building which is in 
many respects novel. The college gymnasium and 
the large library in the hands of our architects have 
become almost as markedly American forms of 
building as the sky-scraper and the grain elevator. 
The demands of the librarian for natural light 
throughout the structure, for compact storage and 
at the same time for instant accessibility of his books, 
for protection from fire and damp, joined with the 
need of supplying plenty of space for readers, for 
administration and for those who throng the corri¬ 
dors and desks where books are given out and re¬ 
turned, have resulted in some extremely interesting 
and beautiful buildings. More and more architects 
are studying the needs of libraries, and mistakes once 
made and realized are seldom repeated. 

The small library also has furnished in the past 
decade numerous opportunities for the designer. 
Aside from the benefactions of Mr. Carnegie, which 
are in some respects the most striking event of the 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


51 


past ten years, literally scores of small buildings 
have been erected by private individuals and by towns. 
These are coming to form an architectural type 
fully as distinct as the large buildings. As a rule, 
of late years these smaller library buildings have 
taken the shape of a rectangular structure with a 
central hall, two large front rooms, a delivery desk 
across the hall and shelves in “stacks” in the rear on 
the main floor. A second story usually provides 
space for additional study and administration rooms. 
A very large number of memorial libraries of this 
general type have been erected, particularly in 
New England. Numerous local and individual varia¬ 
tions occur, but a building designed to shelve some 
ten thousand books so as to be easily reached by 
any visitor and to afford one attendant a fair view 
of the main floor has become the accepted type of 
the small library. 

In 1893 there were but three examples of modern 
library buildings of a size much above the ordinary 
to be seen in America. These were the Boston 
Public Library, the Library of Cornell University 
and the Newberry Library of Chicago. All these 
are dignified and imposing structures, while the Bos¬ 
ton edifice is distinctly one of the foremost public 
buildings of the country. No one of these buildings 
has ever satisfied librarians as an ideal, despite their 
abundant merits. In the past decade a round dozen 


52 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


structures have been reared, which undoubtedly 
rank as of the first order for size and cost. They 
are the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Library of 
Pittsburgh, the Public Libraries of Chicago, Mil¬ 
waukee, Providence, Newark and the District of 
Columbia, and the libraries of Columbia, Princeton, 
New York and Illinois Universities, together with 
that of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 
Each of these buildings is in itself a notable produc¬ 
tion; as a group they form a striking testimony to 
the extent and vitality of the library “movement” 
in this country. None of them is without indi¬ 
viduality. The reading room of the Library of 
Congress, the rotunda and impressive south facade 
of the Columbia Library, the Hall of Fame at the 
rear of the New York University Library, are charac¬ 
teristic features known to all readers of the illus¬ 
trated papers. The others offer even more interest¬ 
ing and valuable returns to the student of our 
architecture and of library problems. The university 
libraries and that of the Wisconsin Historical Society 
in particular will repay the most careful examination. 2 

It has been a decade of building, and the end is 
not yet. The New York Public Library’s building 
now in process of erection is but the largest of scores 

2 It is an interesting commentary on the growth of libraries that 
most of these buildings are already (1925) so crowded as to be 
nearly or wholly outgrown. 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


53 


either planned or under way. For most of this 
expansion Mr. Carnegie is responsible. There seems 
to be no limit to his generosity, and with very few 
exceptions, the money he has given to libraries has 
gone into buildings. Mr. Carnegie is a firm believer 
in the doctrine that the public should support the 
public library, and he has regularly stipulated that 
10 per cent of the amount which he gives for a 
building should be pledged by the community as an 
annual appropriation for maintenance. His gifts 
have gone both to cities already possessing libraries 
great and small, and to others where libraries must 
needs be organized to take advantage of his gifts. 
Exactly what the results of his munificence, aside 
from the buildings, will prove, it is too early to say. 
There seems to be very little likelihood of any but 
good consequences resulting from his wholesale 
giving. 

So much for the “bricks and mortar.” On the 
side of library science substantial progress has been 
achieved. The spirit of cooperation between li¬ 
braries was never so strong as at present. That 
spirit which produced Poole’s Index has resulted in 
the current indexing of over two hundred serials of 
a technical sort in addition to a continuation of this 
earlier work on the more popular magazines. Far 
more important than any other feature of the decade 
has been the adoption of uniform rules for cataloging 


54 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


by many of the libraries of the country, for the pur¬ 
pose of securing printed catalog cards from a 
central bureau. The master minds among librarians 
since the middle of the nineteenth century have 
been urging that it was folly for each individual 
library to reproduce for itself, after the fashion of 
the middle ages, manuscript catalog entries for 
current printed books. A printed book should be 
cataloged on a printed card which could be bought 
either with, or at the same time as, the book. So 
ran the preaching of the idealists. The American 
Library Association for a time endeavored to do this 
through its publishing board; later a commercial 
organization took the work from the hands of the 
association and continued it for a short time. Both 
finally dropped the scheme as financially unprofitable. 
It was reserved for the Library of Congress to take 
the first effective step toward emancipating the 
library profession from the ancient bondage of the 
scribe. First by a series of compromises the libraries 
of the country, through a committee of their associa¬ 
tion, adopted a new set of rules for cataloging. 
Then the Library of Congress announced that it 
was ready to sell the printed cards which it makes for 
copyright books, its other accessions, and such books 
as it re-catalogs, at the regular price of government 
publications, i.e., the cost plus ten per cent. This 
is now being done with great benefit to all concerned. 



LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


55 


The result has undoubtedly been disappointing to 
some enthusiasts who had confidently expected that 
henceforth their catalogs would make themselves. 
But while the labor of cataloging has by no means 
been completely eliminated, the result attained by 
the use of this printed card is a far finer, fuller and 
more perfect card index than any one library could 
ordinarily afford to make, and that at a cost much 
less than that of manuscript cards. There is every 
reason to look forward not alone to a great ex¬ 
tension of the present work of supplying printed 
cards to scholars, bibliographers and libraries, but 
also to an extension of the scheme in the direction 
of international exchange or purchase of printed 
catalog cards. The beginnings of such a move¬ 
ment are to be seen in the bibliographical labors of 
the Institut International of Brussels and the Conci¬ 
lium Bibliographicum of Zurich, while the Inter¬ 
national Catalogue of Scientific Literature for which 
the Royal Society of London is sponsor is another 
great step toward international cooperative catalog¬ 
ing. 

Bibliography has received a great impetus in 
the past decade in America. Among other signs is 
the inevitable one of an organization. Americans, 
said Agassiz, when they have anything to do, must 
have a president, vice-presidents, secretary, treasurer 
and a constitution. The genial Swiss was right. 


56 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


The Bibliographical Society of Chicago is about to 
become the American Bibliographical Society. Mean¬ 
time private and corporate activity has produced 
some noteworthy bibliographies, of which The 
American Library Association’s Guide to the Litera¬ 
ture of American History , Mr. Evans’s American 
Bibliography, the United States Catalogue of Books 
in Print and the American Catalogue are perhaps 
the most remarkable. The list might be indefinitely 
extended. Bibliography, whether seen in the form 
of the scholarly treatise, such as the catalog of 
the Dante collection of Cornell University, or in 
that of the latest reading list for children, has become 
a distinct feature of library progress in America. 

There has been no small amount of legislation 
affecting libraries in the period we are considering. 
This has taken, as a rule, two directions, first, that 
of laws creating or amending a general act providing 
for the establishment of libraries, and second, laws 
establishing library commissions in the several states. 
The latter feature is the most prominent in the his¬ 
tory of the relation of the state to libraries. In 
1893 Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecti¬ 
cut alone possessed these boards. Now twenty 
states have established them by statute. Generally 
these commissions are composed of certain state 
officials ex officio (usually the librarian of the state 
library and the state superintendent of public in- 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


57 


struction) and certain public-spirited citizens who 
serve without pay. They have a modest sum to 
be expended in employing inspectors and organizers. 
In general their work has been limited to helpful 
suggestion to the libraries of their states, and to the 
administration of a system of traveling libraries, 
another new development of the decade. In certain 
states the commission is empowered to render some 
small financial support from state funds to public 
libraries. The Wisconsin commission has furnished 
the model which has generally been followed in the 
west, while the Massachusetts commission has been 
the type for the eastern states. The western com¬ 
missions have had somewhat more legal authority 
as well as larger sums to expend, and have usually 
employed more officers than have those in the east. 
The future will doubtless see an extension of this 
benevolent state supervision and help. It must be 
confessed that no other influence has been so potent 
in the improvement of the condition and adminis¬ 
tration of the smaller and more backward libraries 
as these commissions. They have fully justified 
their right to exist. They have also furthered to a 
remarkable extent the creation of new libraries in 
communities not previously possessing them. “Trav¬ 
eling libraries,” small collections of some fifty books, 
have been called into being and managed largely 
through the commissions. These small collections 



58 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


are sent to rural communities, and even to places 
in large cities where they are desired, are kept for 
a few weeks and exchanged for another set. They 
have commended themselves most highly to those 
interested in bringing books to people who have few 
or none. 

This leads us naturally to a consideration of what 
may be termed the missionary spirit in library work. 
It may be remarked in passing that this seems a 
peculiarly American development, and that in 
general a growing consciousness of the possibilities 
a high and useful service in the life of the munici¬ 
pality has been one of the conspicuous features of 
the public library movement. The librarian who 
regards himself as a missionary of the book has 
been much in evidence of late, and on the whole has 
been both efficient and sane. The idea that he is 
custodian of books merely has ceased in large measure 
to be the librarian’s conception of his office. He is 
rather a guide and helper to the use of books. “The 
best that can be said for any book in this library,” 
said an enthusiastic leader in this sort of work, 
“is that it is entirely worn out, and we must buy two 
new copies of it.” This was in answer to the faint 
protest of an elder librarian to the effect that children 
should not be allowed in libraries because they wore 
out the books by reading them so much. This zeal 
for helping others to books, to the right books, has 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


59 


resulted in many reforms in the internal arrangement 
of library buildings and in the relations of the ad¬ 
ministration to the public. As a rule, the newer 
libraries are allowing a great amount of freedom in 
direct access to the shelves on the part of all users of 
the library. Many of the more recent buildings 
have been planned so that the visitor may go directly 
to the shelves, and many of the older buildings have 
been remodeled to permit this practise. In almost 
every way this has been a gain. There has come 
with it no small loss of books, but that loss is insigni¬ 
ficant in view of the greatly increased use of the 
libraries which has resulted from easy personal con¬ 
tact with books. Most libraries in the future will 
undoubtedly be planned to permit direct access to 
open shelves for a great part of their collections. 
There is, however, a point where this privilege ceases 
to be of use to the public and to the library, and this 
fact is now very generally recognized. 

Open shelves are but one manifestation of the mis¬ 
sionary spirit. Special rooms for children in charge 
of specially trained assistants are another result of 
this desire to bring books and people together. The 
creation of “children’s rooms” has been on the 
whole a great blessing to libraries. It has drawn 
away the younger children from the reading rooms 
and delivery counters, and has perhaps ingrained the 
reading habit in very many little ones. Certainly 


60 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


the children’s room with its cheerful and prettily 
decorated walls, its low tables and chairs and its 
tactful, kind, experienced director has proved a boon 
to countless children into whose homes none of these 
delectable things enter. This particular form of 
library work, is, however, as yet too young to enable 
us to judge of its ultimate results. 

Another form which the missionary spirit has 
taken is a closer relation and a more effective co¬ 
operation between libraries and schools. The desire 
for an organization to give opportunity for the 
public exploitation of this sort of work produced in 
1896 the Library Section of the National Educational 
Association. Not the schools alone, but women’s 
clubs and social settlements, and, in general, all 
organizations whose members use books in their work, 
have been brought into friendly relations with the 
progressive libraries. In short we may safely affirm 
that public libraries are studying the needs of their 
communities as never before, and that the somewhat 
vague notion of aiding the “public” is fast being 
replaced by concrete and tangible assistance to 
organizations and individuals. 

The libraries in the large cities have been showing 
a most decided desire to assist their clients in securing 
books. To this end the branch library and the 
delivery station have experienced an almost mar¬ 
velous development in the past decade. There is 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


61 


hardly a public circulating library of prominence in 
the country which does not maintain from half a 
dozen to half a hundred reading-rooms with small 
collections of reference books, as well as numerous 
stations for delivery of books from the central library. 
The largest number of these branch libraries will 
ultimately be found in New York, where Mr. Carne¬ 
gie’s gifts provide for eighty of these smaller centers 
in the greater city. Branch libraries have not in¬ 
frequently been established at the request of large 
manufacturers or other employers of labor near their 
places of business, and in some cases the running 
expenses have been paid by them. 

Among librarians also the spirit of mutual help¬ 
fulness which has been so characteristic a feature of 
the library movement in this country has grown 
greatly. Library clubs, state associations, interstate 
conferences, and the American Library Association 
have all grown in membership, while their number 
has increased threefold at least. Two new schools 
for training librarians have been established in the 
past decade, and the older schools have strengthened 
their curricula and raised their standard for admission. 
One new journal devoted particularly to the work of 
public libraries has come into existence. 

Any summary of this decade would be incomplete 
which failed to mention the great additions to Ameri¬ 
can libraries in the shape of special collections or 


62 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


endowments for special purposes. Such gifts as 
the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University, 
the Riant collection at Harvard, the Yale collection 
of Semitic manuscripts, the Dante collection pre¬ 
sented to Cornell by Willard Fiske, the Avery Archi¬ 
tectural Library at Columbia, the Morgan collection 
of Vergils and the Garrett collection of Arabic manu¬ 
scripts at Princeton, and the Ford and other col¬ 
lections of the New York Public Library, are but 
conspicuous examples of the collector’s generosity 
which has been so prominent a part of recent library 
history. The man of wealth may easily give money 
for a building, but the scholarly collector who turns 
over to a library for keeping and use of the result of 
his efforts of years gives perhaps even more muni¬ 
ficently. The libraries of this country are yearly 
receiving such donations in ever increasing numbers. 

It would be a rare and happy fate were the libra¬ 
rians of America able to remind themselves of no 
great losses from their ranks in the past decade. 
Such is, unfortunately, not the case. Three of the 
pioneers in library progress have died during this 
period. Those who know intimately the history 
of the library movement will at once acknowledge 
that in the loss of Wm. F. Poole, Justin Winsor and 
C. A. Cutter the library world has been sorely stricken. 
Dr. Poole is remembered by historians and librarians 
alike for his services to American history and bibliog- 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


63 


raphy. Mr. Winsor’s achievements as a cartog¬ 
rapher, historian and librarian are too well known 
to need more than mention. Mr. Cutter, whose 
death occurred only last summer, was not so widely 
known outside the circle of technical workers. To 
librarians he was celebrated for a long series of most 
valuable contributions to the problems of classifi¬ 
cation and cataloging, while his personal qualities 
endeared him to all. That such men were to be 
found foremost among American librarians is one 
of the occasions for pride in their calling. Their 
memory should prove one of the greatest incentives 
to future workers in their chosen field. 

It would be a rash man who should venture to 
predict the directions of library growth in the next 
ten years. Certain tendencies, however, may be 
inferred from the immediate past. It is almost 
certain that the impetus given to public libraries by 
Mr. Carnegie will result in steady growth and an 
increased efficiency in this field. It is equally cer¬ 
tain, I think, that more efficient and widely extended 
state inspection and advice to libraries are likely 
to be had in the near future. Library legislation is 
tending to become more uniform in the several states 
and perhaps the enabling acts which now permit 
public libraries to be supported by taxation may be 
exchanged for mandatory acts compelling their es¬ 
tablishment after the manner of public schools. 



64 


LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA 


The greatest internal improvements which can be 
foreshadowed will probably be the growth of a 
scholarly spirit among librarians, and an increased 
emphasis on bibliographical work. A large measure 
of cooperation in the technical details of library 
administration and the consequent cheapening of its 
cost may also confidently be expected. Finally, it 
is entirely probable that the educational value of 
libraries in the community will come to be greater 
both by reason of the conscious efforts of the 
librarians to increase their efficiency, and by the 
recognition of those efforts on the part of the public 
whom they serve. 


THE AMOUNT OF HELP TO BE GIVEN TO 
READERS 1 * 2 


It is my desire to set forth in this paper a practical 
problem of reference work which confronts every 
reference librarian and his chief in planning the work 
of a university or a research library. We exist for 
readers. How much help can we give them without 
going beyond the limits of common sense and of our 
appropriations, without becoming private secretaries 
or private tutors? 

How much help do readers need? Our university 
libraries (and our public libraries, too, for that mat¬ 
ter) discover the utmost variety in the preparedness 
of readers to use the facilities the libraries offer. The 
freshman—and occasionally the senior—who knows 
nothing of how to use a library, who requests some¬ 
thing to help “get up Professor X.’s exam.,” who “has 
a theme to write on the sunrise and wants a book on 
it, don’t you know,” rubs elbows with the professor 
who comes in to inquire whether Herr Dr. Syntax of 
Tubingen ever published a treatise on the Homeric 
Digamma, or whether you can’t find out for him 

1 Read at Minnetonka Lake Conference, American Library 
Association, at the College and Reference Section, June 23, 1908. 

2 Library Journal , July, 1908. 

65 


66 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


what was the amount of the cotton crop in Oklahoma 
last fall, for—“it isn’t anything I’ve been able to 
lay hands on.” 

To illustrate the extremes of ability to use a library, 
let me relate two experiences of my own: I well 
remember my first encounter with a card catalog. 
It was at the University of Michigan, and too long 
long ago for me to count the years with comfort, and 
too few with pride. I had haunted the Detroit 
Public Library for years, and knew every nook and 
corner of it—but I had never seen, much less used, 
a card catalog. I went into the university library in 
the evening to pass away a couple of hours. I 
wanted a book—any book—and I was coldly re¬ 
ferred to a case of double-tray drawers where little 
cards were arranged—by authors. I remember to 
this day turning those cards. Being a methodical 
soul, even then, I had begun with A, and Aristotle 
was the first author I happened on. Do you wonder 
that I turned away from the oak case in which the 
first card written west of Cambridge was even then 
said to repose, and went out of that library utterly 
discouraged? There were no open shelves then, 
save for a few dictionaries, etc., and no reference 
librarian, and the “student assistant” on duty that 
night saw in me only a freshman who wanted to idle 
away time. I submit there was room for assistance 
in this case. The book-worm in me couldn’t be 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


67 


downed, even by Aristotle, and yet I remember 
many a time after that, when I had become thoroughly 
familiar with the use of the catalog, turning over 
the author cards at random to find something to 
read when I was tired or had an hour to spare. A 
selection of good literature on open shelves is an 
assistance to readers at a formative period which 
no university or college library can afford to forego. 
The more books the student can see and handle the 
better. They are worth more than catalogs, bibliog¬ 
raphies, yes—and the reference librarian! 

A few days since I watched a famous scholar at 
work in the Library of Congress. He evidently had 
a point of bibliography to settle. He scanned our 
card catalog, making rapid notes of call-numbers. 
He took down volume after volume of the British 
Museum Catalog, making copious notes while his 
books were being gathered. For two hours he 
opened volumes, rejected some, kept others; re¬ 
newed his search, again made notes, and then left as 
quietly as he came. He had used over a hundred 
books, had consulted half a thousand entries, I am 
sure, and had needed no assistance save once when 
a book was not produced because of an error—on 
our part, I regret to say. Under his skilful 
hands our bibliographic tools worked with the pre¬ 
cision of a well-oiled engine. It was an inspiring 
sight to see the rapidity, the ease, the accuracy 


68 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


with which he went from step to step in his investi¬ 
gations, the assuredness with which he jotted down 
his final note and went out. That task was done. 
What assistance did he need from us? Merely the 
careful doing of our routine duties. 

The two cases are not absolutely analogous, for 
I was seeking a book to read for recreation—the 
scholar was in search of a definite title, but I should 
have been equally at sea, I am sure, in trying to 
find a book on any given subject. 

Between those persons, then, who are practically 
helpless in the face of ordinary library machinery, 
and those to whom our devices for registering books 
are useful and easily handled tools, lies the whole 
world of readers in the kind of libraries with which 
this section is concerned. 

Is the ability to use books and to use libraries an 
end to be consciously sought in our universities 
and colleges? At present if a student acquires 
much facility in these lines it is safe to say that this 
ability is a by-product of other work, rather than 
the result of intentional study or instruction. It 
is well known that in the smaller colleges there is a 
good deal of efficient work now being done in teaching 
students to use the library. In the larger libraries 
where the need for training is greatest instruction is, 
ordinarily, wanting. We ought to be able to assume 
that freshmen have learned in their preparatory 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


69 


school days how to consult a card catalog, how to 
make out an intelligent call for books, how to use 
Pool’s “Index,” and what encyclopaedias and bib¬ 
liographies are for. This is but little in the way of 
equipment for serious study in a university or re¬ 
search library, but the want of just such an equip¬ 
ment on the part of students, and of readers in a 
public research library, confines much of the work 
of assistance to most elementary first aid to the 
injured. I fear our experience is that the average 
freshman needs help in doing almost any one of 
the simple acts just mentioned. 

This being so, is it not possible in our larger colleges 
and universities to impart in some formal manner 
this elementary training, and to go beyond to the 
regions of cooperative indices, card indices, great 
library catalogs, and so on? I see very little that 
leads me to think this will soon come about. We 
have heard much talk of “professors of books,” 
of “instruction in bibliography,” and so forth, for 
many years, but I fear that the art of using large 
collections of books must still be learned by the 
hard way of experience, rather than be taught in 
classes. There seems no good reason why it should 
not be taught formally, nor why the work should not 
be thorough and hard enough to count toward a 
degree. At Princeton, where the new “preceptorial 
system” has been heralded as furnishing the long- 


70 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


desired “professors of books and reading,” I knew 
but one preceptor who systematically trained his 
men in using bibliographies or catalogs. Most of 
them saw to it that the students read diligently, and 
probably mastered a small number of works which 
were reserved at the desk, but they conspicuously 
failed to train them in the use of indices, catalogs, 
and bibliographies. 

If, then, we find oursleves confronted with this 
lack of training in the methods of using the library, 
how far can we go in supplying this want in the 
midst of our routine work? It is evident that we 
must try to get students, and other readers, in the 
habit of using ordinary helps, but first it is pertinent 
to ask what they do when they are puzzled. 

At this point I might close this paper, and we 
could devote an hour to telling the experiences which 
we all have had in arriving at that most elusive 
object of inquiry—the thing a reader really wants 
to know about . 3 The chief art of a desk assistant 
or a reference librarian is—as we all know—the 
knack of divining by long experience what is actually 
wanted by inquirers. The fact that so few readers 

3 The classic illustration is the tale—originating at the Redwood 
Library in Newport, I believe—of the girl who spent half a morning 
in looking at all the library’s books on Greek mythology and religion. 
Skillful questioning at last brought out the fact that she really 
wanted to know the exact measure of the waist of the Venus of Milo. 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


71 


will ask directly for what they want, even when they 
have a clear idea of their needs—which is seldom 
the case—is perhaps a greater obstacle to successful 
reference work than poor equipment, poor catalogs, 
few bibliographies. But granted that the task is 
not easy, where does it as a rule begin? What is 
the point of contact between reader and library? 

Most readers will ask questions at the loan desk. 
We might as well make up our minds to that fact. 
No matter how elaborate the machinery provided 
for their assistance elsewhere, they will persist in 
asking for aid from the people they know, and with 
whose ways they are familiar, rather than walk 
twenty-five feet and ask a question of some one who 
is busily engaged behind an unfamiliar desk which 
in many cases bears a strange sign. We all do it. 
Don’t we ask the gate-keeper or the policeman in 
a railroad station our bothersome questions rather 
than walk to the conspicuously labelled“Bureau of 
Information”? Shall we demand and expect an in¬ 
quiring soul to seek out in the library the proper 
place and persons to whom to put his questions? 
Granted then that most inquiries in any library 
which circulates books will originate at the loan 
desk, how shall we make sure that the questions are 
properly answered and the inquirers directed to 
the right person? 

It is imperative, I take it, in order to bring this 


72 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


result about, that the reference librarian should 
be in close touch and on the most cordial terms with 
the loan desk assistants. I will not go into the 
question as to whether he should exercise an actual 
control of assignments and of the loan desk work 
generally, though I think the work would benefit 
by such control. But if the assistants are to receive 
most of the inquiries, as they will anyhow, it is most 
important that the man who must be finally responsi¬ 
ble for the assistance to be given should know how 
the questions are met and what amount of aid is 
attempted at the desk. It is most important also 
that the desk attendants do not attempt to do too 
much themselves; that they shall, on the one hand, 
turn over to the reference librarians inquiries in¬ 
volving much time, and, on the other hand, that 
they shall direct the inquirer to the catalog and 
similar helps. We are all agreed that the desk at¬ 
tendant ought to be a compound of the manly and 
polite virtues. But if we urge on him the value of 
politeness and unwearying zeal we may often find 
him overdoing the part. I have seen a good deal 
of this excess of effort to aid readers. I have not 
infrequently seen desk assistants drop everything 
to look up books for readers in the catalog with no 
thought that they were unwisely doing the reader’s 
proper work for him. The poise and balanced 
judgment of the true teacher, who remembers that 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


73 


his business is, as has been well said, “to make him¬ 
self useless,” would be a great desideratum in a 
desk attendant. I don’t suppose that we shall get 
this for the salaries we usually pay for these positions, 
but we can at least get the careful supervision and 
counsel of reference librarian and chief of the circu¬ 
lation work. It is worth while, perhaps, to add 
that an excess of zeal frequently develops the habit 
in desk assistants and others of spending an inor¬ 
dinate amount of time on one reader. It requires 
a pretty firm hand, and good judgment to keep 
eager assistants, full of the desire to help, within 
reasonable bounds, without at the same time dis¬ 
couraging the assistant’s spirit of helpfulness; but 
some one must, as a rule, do this, if the work is not 
to suffer seriously. 

If the library is at all large, it is frequently helpful 
to have a small leaflet printed to explain the methods 
of securing books. Most libraries give on such 
leaflets or cards merely the rules and regulations 
with some descriptive matter. If I may again be 
permitted a personal experience, let me tell how I 
was taught to use a card catalog. The Student’s 
Christian Association at Michigan used to print 
a Students' Handbook , full of most sage and excellent 
counsel for a newcomer. In the one I was given 
when I entered college I found a couple of para¬ 
graphs headed, if my memory serves me, “How to 


74 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


draw a book.” The whole process was described— 
the catalogs and what they were for; the cabalistic 
shelf-numbers, and where they were found on the 
cards. I read that these numbers were always in 
pencil and were in the upper left-hand corner of 
author cards only. If you found a book under a 
subject heading, you must look up the corresponding 
author card to get the number before presenting 
your slip at the delivery desk; and it was carefully 
impressed on me that this number must be on the 
slip. I don’t know who wrote that lucid and detailed 
explanation, but I do know that I never had any 
trouble in getting a book at the desk after I had 
mastered it. If we could once get all our readers 
inoculated with the call-number germ, we could 
dispense with about half our cares in desk and 
reference work. I submit that such a detailed 
explanation of the modus operandi of securing a 
book would do no harm to the man who already 
knows the process, and would be of very great 
assistance to those who don’t know just what to 
do. I would make the leaflet, or whatever you chose 
to print, compact, but most explicit, and I think 
it would be more useful than any statement as to the 
scope and extent of the library’s collections. 

Suppose then that we have in some manner tided 
our inquirer over the early difficulties which are the 
result of inexperience, and suppose that he is aware 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


75 


of the existence of the card catalog; there remains 
one final question of serious import. Can a card 
catalog ever be made self-interpreting? We li¬ 
brarians have apparently proceeded for years on 
the theory that it can. We have busied ourselves 
about “evaluations” and descriptive notes, about 
headings and author entries with the “public” ever 
in mind, and on our tongues. But I have my very 
serious doubts whether the card catalog is ever 
going to become the guide, philosopher, and friend 
of the ordinary user of libraries. Its inherent diffi¬ 
culties are many and serious, even at the best. It 
seems fair to say that the average card catalog will 
always need an interpreter so long as our readers 
are not trained in its use so that they know the 
niceties of arrangement, of entry, and sub-headings. 
Why not recognize this fact? Why not have in 
our large research libraries at least one attendant 
whose sole—or chief—duty it shall be to assist the 
reader desiring to use the catalog? Do you ever 
go to the catalog yourself when there is an unusual 
number of readers present that some one does not 
ask you a question as to what this card means, or 
how to find some title in the curious machine? I 
should like to see the experiment tried and to learn 
the results. I am sure that attendant would earn 
his money! 

Now if we have provided in some way for aiding 


76 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


our students to use the library intelligently, if we 
have trained our assistants at the desk to help them 
to help themselves, still better, if we have given 
them formal instruction in the art of using books 
in libraries, there remains the curious problem of 
the “reserved” books. These books become, in 
the students’ eyes, practically text books, and their 
attitude toward them is singularly like their indif¬ 
ference toward the algebra or the history which forms 
the basis for instruction in class-room work. They 
come frequently, perhaps daily, to the library to 
read a given number of pages on which they are to 
be quizzed. There is no enthusiasm for the task 
as a rule; frequently this reading is an unwelcome 
requirement, an uncomfortable incident of the col¬ 
lege course. We may find this attitude of indif¬ 
ference, or even of distaste, extending toward the 
whole library. That love for the world of books, 
that passion for letters which is the hall-mark of the 
scholar they may—and they do—utterly escape. 
The great development of the seminar and depart¬ 
mental libraries begets, too often, a similar attitude 
toward literature in maturer students. Have we not 
in this situation a challenge to our inventiveness 
and to our loyalty to our profession? Is there no 
way in which we may win the enthusiasm and devo¬ 
tion of the modern student for humane letters? 
We cannot afford to ignore the problem. It exists 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


77 


and it is growing in seriousness. My own feeling 
is that it is partially met by a large open-shelf col¬ 
lection, for circulation as well as reference, in the 
reading room; by the silent invitation of interesting 
books which may be read without let or hindrance. 

There is another class of difficulties which some¬ 
times calls for all the tact the librarian possesses. I 
refer to his relations with the faculty, and with 
investigators of experience. It is, from one point 
of view, absurd to think that the reference librarian 
can be of much service to an eminent specialist, but 
our experience generally is, I think, that he so fre¬ 
quently can be of use in bibliographical matters 
that he is subject to very many demands from the 
professors and others. In many cases these are 
perfectly reasonable and legitimate—the service 
is gladly rendered and the work offers problems of 
extreme interest to the reference librarian. He is 
likely to be able, by reason of his familiarity with 
all sorts of catalogs, to run down titles obscurely 
quoted, and to perform other feats of library legerde¬ 
main in a fashion that not unfrequently astonishes 
even the trained investigator. This very facility, 
however, may lead to demands on his time that are 
wholly unreasonable in view of other responsibilities 
he must bear. In conversation with reference libra¬ 
rians I have found that the tendency of certain 
professors to make private secretaries out of them 


78 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


was a very real difficulty in their work. To meet 
it requires experience and tact, and, occasionally, 
the balanced judgment of the head-librarian. The 
existence of this problem is in itself a witness to the 
efficiency of the work done by the reference librarian. 
No expert would trouble him in this way, if the work 
were poor and weak. It is a problem resulting from 
good work, and therefore to be welcomed. 

Even if the relations with the faculty are in no 
case such as to cause questioning, I think we are safe 
in saying that there will always exist the necessity 
for determining the amount of assistance to be given 
to seekers after genealogical data. How far can 
we afford to go in research libraries in aiding those 
engaged in the gentle sport of “hunting ancestors”? 
This is a practical problem of every-day work. Shall 
we decline to give assistance beyond putting the 
ordinary indices and guides before the reader, or 
shall we enter into his problems and try to aid him 
to run down the particular ancestor about whom 
he is uncertain? If we attempt much of this sort 
of help, we shall soon find ourselves doing a very 
considerable amount of extra work. If the other 
duties are not too heavy, well and good. But should 
we do this genealogical reference work for readers 
when other demands on our time are multifarious 
and important? In general I think we should not. 
There are plenty of professional genealogists who 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


79 


can do it better, perhaps, than we can. The uni¬ 
versity libraries are usually in receipt of numerous 
inquiries about students in the early years of the 
institution from their actual or suppositious de¬ 
scendants. This sort of inquiry sees to me perfectly 
legitimate, the more so as it often leads the inquirer 
to present documents and other material of value 
to the university library. But in general I favor 
refusing to do genealogical reference work for cor¬ 
respondents, particularly those who have no claim 
on the library. 

We may also consider in this connection the 
question of making transcripts for correspondents. 
Requests to do this are numerous, in my experience, 
and frequently burdensome. The amount which 
we are asked to copy varies from a single line to 
several chapters. Frequently the circumstances of 
the correspondents are such as to make the request 
seem reasonable. I presume we all do more or less 
of this sort of work, but the problem is to draw the 
line beyond which we cannot go. Of course the 
development of the inter-library loan is aiding us 
to meet the problem to a certain extent. We can 
say to a correspondent that the book from which 
transcripts are desired can be sent to the local library 
where he can make the copy himself, but we cannot, 
of course, do this in the case of extremely rare works, 
of manuscripts, and of valuable or heavy newspapers. 


80 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


When the extract desired is short, we can probably 
afford to aid the inquirer, but when it involves much 
time, we had better turn over the inquiry to a pro¬ 
fessional copyist who will arrange for the work 
directly with the correspondent . 4 

This brings up the question of certifying under 
oath to the correctness of such copies. Should we 
undertake to make attested copies for use in lawsuits? 
Perhaps this matter does not come up frequently in 
most libraries, but it is a very troublesome one when 
it does occur. If a document can be photographed, 
that process of reproduction will sometimes relieve us 
of the difficulty. In the case of copies, the lawyers 
are likely to demand that the chief librarian shall 
make the attest. Again, calling in a professional 
copyist or typewriter will relieve the situation. His 
oath is amply sufficient, and will be accepted by the 
court. 

I have endeavored to show that there are problems 
as to the amount of aid to be attempted in nearly 
every department of reference work and loan desk 
service. Many of them arise from the inexperience 
of readers—others from the insistent demands of 
scholars. We can provide against the first by the 

4 Photoduplicating machines have now been developed to a 
point which renders hand-copying unnecessary. They do not, 
however, solve the problem of making abstracts, or of deciding what 
passages are worth photographing. 


HELP TO BE GIVEN TO READERS 


81 


organization of our own force and by the gradual 
process of education in using books. The only 
limit we care to set to our response to the second 
sort is that of our means. Give us the men and 
the money and we will take care of the growing 
demands of the trained workers. 


TWO UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY 
WORK 1 - 2 


Occasionally one hears in professional circles, 
generally from a comparatively recent recruit, some 
pronouncement to the effect that most fundamental 
problems of library work have been settled long ago, 
and that the only tasks now before librarians are 
those involved in adapting principles already well 
established to new conditions or in expanding small 
activities into larger fields. Such expressions are 
not infrequently coupled with a generous conscious¬ 
ness of the preeminent excellence of American 
library methods in contrast with those of the rest 
of the world. We are all more or less familiar with 
this sort of talk, and are perhaps inclined to be more 
or less consciously influenced by it. It may, there¬ 
fore, be wholesome and profitable to turn our atten¬ 
tion to at least two problems which are fundamental 
to the successful prosecution of our calling and which 
not only are unsolved here as yet, but are—at least 
in part—in a fair way to solution elsewhere. 

When a reader or inquirer comes to a library and 

1 President’s address at the meeting of the District pf Columbia 
Library Association, December 13, 1911. 

2 Library Journal , January, 1912. 

82 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


83 


asks for a book whose author and title he knows, he 
presents our first problem in its most simple form. 
Where is the book he wants? If it is at once pro¬ 
duced, either by the ready memory of the librarian, 
the aid of an author or a title entry in the catalog, 
or by whatever other means are used, the problem is 
solved, and ceases to be more than a matter of or¬ 
dinary routine. When the work is not readily 
identified or not readily found, and further search 
of catalogs or shelves is required, the problem, al¬ 
though complicated somewhat, still remains fairly 
easy, if the book can be produced in good time. 
But when the book cannot be produced there arise 
at once two questions: first, “Is the book here, but 
for the moment concealed through some of the intri¬ 
cacies or deficiencies of cataloging or failure of other 
library machinery?” and second, “If not here, where 
is it?” 

We assume that the inquirer has a correct de¬ 
scription of his desired work. Were we to go into 
the possibilities of confusion, inaccuracy and error 
which lurk in even a scholarly reader’s requests, we 
should speedily convince ourselves that there are 
plenty of unsolved problems of another sort awaiting 
the unwary librarian. 

There have not been wanting of late signs of an 
untoward satisfaction with our catalogs, particularly 
in the matter of author entries. We are all agreed 


84 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


that much has been accomplished in the direction of 
simplicity and uniformity. There has been some 
shaking of heads over the alarming size of card cata¬ 
logs and over the loss of time in many directions con¬ 
sequent upon that size. I hold that there are many 
matters which still await final settlement, not the 
least of which is this very question of bulk. But we 
are here concerned with the problem of getting the 
reader his book. Now, that book is more likely 
than ever before to be one of those baleful things 
known as a “part,” a member of a “series,” a “heft,” 
a “number.” This, as we all know, is an age of 
journalistic and cooperative publishing, the small 
dues of a large number of interested specialists, or 
the munificence of some endowment making possible 
the publication of all sorts of treatises which would 
remain in obscurity—often, it is to be feared, de¬ 
served—without such adventitious aid. 

Leaving, then, for the present, other difficulties 
of our catalogs as they now stand, are they so made 
that they yield certain and accurate information in 
the case of books produced in any of the cooperative 
methods of modern publication in this age of societies, 
foundations, expeditions, clubs, international under¬ 
takings, and governmental publishing? No one of 
us dares to affirm that they do. Who has not used 
every known means of assistance, lists and advertising 
pamphlets carefully preserved, the old covers of 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


85 


“continuations,” the special catalogs of certain 
libraries, and bibliographies of all sorts to help him 
to discover in his own library books whose presence 
ought (it would seem) to have been revealed by the 
card catalog almost instantly? Who has not strug¬ 
gled with that endless and vexatious task, the record 
of receipt of continuations and serials? Who has 
not cursed—at least inwardly—the binder and the 
binding record when looking for such works? Who 
of us, no matter what his library experience, no 
matter how small his library, has not been shamed 
by discovering at some later date a book or a “part” 
he has confidently asserted was not in the library? 

Shall we throw all the blame for this sort of thing 
on the much-abused catalogers and makers of cata¬ 
loging rules? By no means. It is the business of 
every one of us who work in libraries to join heartily 
in the effort to make the record, the key, to our col¬ 
lections as useful, as complete, as adequate as we 
can. We may fairly say to the specialists who cata¬ 
log that they should meet us who use their product 
half way; that they must, of course, study the needs 
of users of the catalog, and that every device making 
for plainness, clarity, speed, and convenience in its 
consultation should be employed. But the blame, 
if blame there be, rests ultimately on those who do 
not make plain the difficulties under which they 
labor. We have a perfectly apparent condition in 


86 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


regard to our records of series and groups of all sorts; 
they either are too inadequate, or too clumsy, or 
too slowly made. When each entry has a separate 
card they fill up too much space and consume too 
much time (though numerous guides would help 
that difficulty); when several entries are made on a 
card they are hard to read, and when the books 
come out at irregular intervals and are afterward 
bound into one volume—and always cited and 
inquired for by the title of that volume and not by 
their numbers or names in the set—or when they 
exhibit any other of the trying and puzzling freakish¬ 
ness of Teutonic publishing, we are driven to distrac¬ 
tion, and the inquirer begins “to think scornful” 
of trained librarians. Experimentation, criticism, 
comparison, may perhaps put us in the way of making 
our card catalogs instruments of precision. And 
even instruments of precision may be worked faultily 
by careless or indifferent guardians. 

Meantime—while we have been indulging in 
reflections on but one phase of complex catalogs— 
where is that book? We can’t find it; our catalogs, 
our shelf-lists, our order-lists, our serial records, our 
book catalogs and bibliographies don’t show it here. 
Now, while we may be able to suggest a substitute 
(and therein lies much of the art of the successful 
librarian), our problem with which we started is 
not solved. The inquirer is not helped, if his need 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


87 


be a definite one for a given book. He wants it; wants 
to borrow it; wants, perhaps, to go to it. Where is 
it to be found in these United States of America? 

How often we have had to say, “I don’t know!” 
How often have we made answer, “It may be in 
Harvard, or the Lenox, or the John Carter Brown”! 
How often have we said, “There is a special collec¬ 
tion on that subject at Cornell or at the Boston 
Public Library. Write to the librarian inquiring 
for it there.” Less frequently we have, of course, 
been able to say, “A copy is in the Boston Athenaeum 
or in the Peabody Library, or the Avery Architec¬ 
tural Library of Columbia, or in Mr. Church’s 
library,” or, “There was a copy sold in the Brinley 
or the Hurst sale”? And with what quiet scorn has 
our reader looked at us when we have proudly told 
him that there is a copy in the British Museum, 
or the Library of the Faculty of Advocates at Edin¬ 
burgh. 

Is not this state of affairs a challenge to our inven¬ 
tiveness, our power of cooperation, our collective 
responsibility? Since the day of great catalogs in 
book form appears to be definitely past, what sub¬ 
stitute have we for their precise and ready informa¬ 
tion? The lists of special collections and the union 
lists of serials are a help, but they are all too limited 
in scope. Few libraries suffice in themselves for the 
necessities of scholars. We need—they need—a 


88 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


means of locating a book not in the library in which 
they are working. 

The basis for such a list already exists in the 
printed catalog cards of various libraries, so fully 
described in the November (1911) Library Journal. 
The titles—now about 500,000 3 —of the Library of 
Congress cards form an unrivalled nucleus for a 
union list of works in the large libraries and the 
special collections of this country. Perhaps we 
have not fully realized what it means to have a basis 
of nearly half a million titles which will soon auto¬ 
matically extend itself to as many more. Consider 
for a moment the probable number of works in other 
American libraries not represented in the Library of 
Congress cards. Will it be much more than half a 
million titles when the re-cataloging is completed, 
a consummation actually in sight? Perhaps. Who 
can say? But even if it should be that or double that 
number, there is no serious physical obstacle in the 
mere size to grouping and filing two million or more 
cards. 

However, is the proposition for a union catalog 
a mere dream, an ideal never to be realized? By 
no means. A decade should see every book in the 
District of Columbia not in the Library of Congress 
represented by a card printed by that library, or 


3 In 1925, over 800,000. 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


89 


under its rules, or by an entry in a book catalog. 
Look at the beginning which has been made. Titles 
from the Public Library, the Department of Agri¬ 
culture, the Geological Survey, the Bureau of Edu¬ 
cation, and the Army War College have been printed 
for some years. During the past year they have 
been printed for the Bureau of Fisheries, the Bureau 
of Labor, and the Engineer School. These cards 
are now filed in three catalogs in the Library of 
Congress. 4 There are just two large government 
libraries not likely to be covered by printed cards 
within ten years—the Surgeon General’s Library 
and the Documents Office Library. For both of 
these adequate catalogs and check-lists in book 
form exist, and I should not like to risk my reputation 
on any prophecy that even these libraries would not 
eventually be found in line with printed cards—at 
least for books not in the Library of Congress col¬ 
lections. 

The other libraries now printing cards—John 
Crerar, Chicago University, New York Public, 
Boston Public, Harvard University, Carnegie Li¬ 
brary of Pittsburgh—print (or will print) mainly for 
books not represented by cards in the Library of 
Congress set. What escapes the net thus spread 
at present comprise (1) books in these libraries 

4 The “Second official,” in the Catalog division, the so-called 
“Union catalog,” and the author catalog in the card section. 


90 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


acquired prior to the beginning of their adoption of 
the printed card for their catalogs (now the bulk 
of their collections, it must be admitted); (2) books 
in series not yet analyzed by any of these libraries 
(no inconsiderable number); (3) works in special 
collections in other libraries, or in the libraries de¬ 
voted to special fields ( e.g ., the Dante collection at 
Cornell, the Hispanic Society’s Library); (4) occa¬ 
sional book rarities in general libraries. 

We have already filed at the Library of Congress 
in one alphabet the printed (or otherwise duplicated) 
cards from all these libraries, save the Carnegie Li¬ 
brary of Pittsburgh. This Union catalog now con¬ 
tains approximately 650,000 cards and is already of 
very great aid in locating a desired book. The short¬ 
comings of the present combined list are numerous 
and painful; still every entry which is there is a 
gain, and so far as the list goes, it has proven its 
worth. The next step is to go on with this union 
catalog enlarging it in every way possible, and 
making it available to investigators, both away from 
Washington and here. 

Another step in the preparation of a union catalog 
of the important titles in American libraries is the 
adoption of a plan long followed, I am told, at Har¬ 
vard. When a list comes out of rare items in any 
library, two copies are procured, cut up, the slips 
mounted, the name of the library stamped on the 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


91 


cards, which are then filed in the official catalog. 
Frequently the fact that a copy is in Providence, in 
Princeton, in Ann Arbor, and can be procured 
through inter-library loan satisfies an inquirer’s 
need, and saves not only the cost, but, even more 
important, the time (possibly years in the case of a 
very rare book) which would otherwise be lost before 
it could be procured. The plan needs only to be 
suggested to show its patent usefulness. There 
should not be any serious difficulty in carrying it 
into effect. We should then find ourselves able to 
say that a book not in the government libraries of 
the District, and not shown by their printed cards 
to be in any one of our greater libraries, is to be 
found in some special collection. I need not dwell on 
the service to scholarship of such definite information. 

When the Prussians began the Gesammtkatalog 
of their university libraries in 1899, they had no such 
basis to work on as the printed cards of the Library 
of Congress furnishes us. They had the enormous 
advantage (from the point of execution) of govern¬ 
ment control of the libraries involved in the scheme. 
They are steadily at work under rigid rules, and the 
catalog is steadily growing, with every assurance of 
accuracy and symmetry. But when it is done, and 
when the work of the Auskunftsbureau 5 is in full 

6 See Berlin, Konigliche Bibliothek. Jahresberichte, Anhang, 
1909-1910, and earlier years. 


92 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


swing, there will be no very great advantage over 
our situation, if we only plan our union catalog with 
a little thoroughness now, and succeed in impressing 
on librarians its practical value. We are able to 
save much time and trouble to investigators now. 
There is no reason why we should not greatly extend 
the service we now render. We shall live to see the 
day—and we shall not be so very old, either-—when 
we can give a definite answer to the question, “Where 
is that book?” 

So much for the book which is known, but not at 
hand. How are we prepared to cope with the re¬ 
quest—again from a reader who knows his need— 
for the best book or books on a given topic, or for 
any book on that topic, in other words, to answer 
the request for a book not known? Of course, this 
question opens up at once the whole field of subject 
cataloging and of bibliographies. I do not propose 
to cover the whole of that field. Five years ago, 
at the Narragansett Pier Conference, I set forth 
certain views on subject cataloging. Some points 
which stand out very clearly as a result of further 
discussion and reflection on our subject catalogs as an 
aid to investigators I desire to mention. I wish, 
by the way, that I could be as confident of the 
future of subject cataloging as I am of that of pro¬ 
viding a general author catalog for the United States. 

Definiteness of subject headings seems much more 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


93 


assured than it did in 1906. We have several agencies 
which contribute to that end. First, the new A. L. A. 
“List of subject headings” has at last appeared, too 
recently for any detailed criticism to-night. It is 
about four times the size of the old list, and—judg¬ 
ing from a hasty examination—about ten times as 
valuable. Most of the changes, especially in subject 
headings, seem to be in the direction of precision and 
definiteness. Thus we have a new tool. 

Second, the Library of Congress has begun the 
publication of its list of headings, which, like the 
A. L. A. list, is of general headings only, omit¬ 
ting most specific names. (I greatly regret this 
omission myself.) The value of this list will grow 
steadily more apparent with the years, especially 
as the printed cards will contain the same headings. 
The headings to be used in cataloging the Law Li¬ 
brary have also been printed in tentative form for 
criticism and study. Here are two more tools, both 
extremely helpful in teaching method and in securing 
uniformity of treatment. 

Several of our largest libraries have comparatively 
recently taken up the systematic study and revision 
of their catalogs, among them Harvard, Columbia, 
Yale, and Chicago Universities. While as yet but 
little has got into print as the result of these efforts, 
they are bound in time to produce valuable results, 
which will become known and perhaps settle into 


94 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


principles of subject cataloging. Thus the question 
is being agitated and will not continue a matter of 
indifference. 

The fact remains, however, that good subject 
cataloging at the present time is largely a matter of 
the personal judgment of individual catalogers. 
There has not been formulated any such body of 
rules for subject entry as has been evolved by years 
of experiment and discussion for author entry. In 
the very nature of things this is probably inevitable. 
The author is but one person, or at most a group of 
persons. When once the books are written they do 
not change. An entry for the author which satisfies 
one generation of students is almost certain to satisfy 
the next generation, at least the exceptions will be 
few. But the subject, even of a simple book, is 
seldom single; the viewpoint of the users changes 
with untoward rapidity, and those users are both 
multifarious and to the last degree diverse. To 
devise adequate rules and methods of subject entry 
is a task which makes a far greater demand on our 
profession than any we have yet met. And when 
we have met it as best we know how, it remains to 
be done over again by our successors. 

Moreover, the subject catalog suffers more than 
the author catalog from the disturbing factor of 
size. Groups of subject cards which reach into the 
hundreds or even thousands are an insult to the 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


95 


investigator as they stand in most of our catalogs 
to-day. They waste his time; they hinder his judg¬ 
ment in selection; they baffle rather than help. 

Two remedies for the problem of size have been 
suggested—a selection of the valuable titles, and 
an inverse chronological arrangement of entries. 
The first frankly confesses that the catalog breaks 
down of its own weight. The second endeavors to 
prevent the strain from reaching the breaking point. 
I have suggested a combination of the two methods, 
but so far no library, to my knowledge, has attempted 
it. Another effort to meet the difficulty—although, 
perhaps, not undertaken with this trouble in mind— 
is the publication on every hand of select lists of 
references on special topics. Perhaps we shall 
yet fall back on these as the solution, reserving our 
subject catalogs in their complete form for those 
few plodding readers who desire to cover a subject 
in its entirety. 

The situation which confronts the reference li¬ 
brarian is frankly difficult when asked to produce the 
best work on a given topic, and its difficulty in¬ 
creases in direct ratio to the size of the library and 
the zeal of the cataloger in multiplying subject 
cards. Whenever the inquiry is definite, minute, 
and limited we can do pretty well. There is little 
trouble, for instance, in picking out two or three 
fairly recent and valuable books on the War of 1812, 


96 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


on Calvin, on the Ice Age, and letting the reader 
select the one most suited to his need. The case is 
far different when it comes to inquiries for such 
broad topics as naval science, the Reformation, or 
geology. How to meet such an inquiry from the 
subject catalog in a large library I do not know, at 
any rate, as catalogs are now made. We turn in¬ 
stinctively to bibliographies, to book catalogs, to 
almost anything but a mass of cards. I had occasion 
recently to look at the Library of Congress cards 
under the heading: “Bible. New Testament. 
Bibliography .” to see whether anything had been 
printed since 1900 on that topic which would take 
the place of Thayer’s “The use of books.” It took 
me ten minutes of searching under various heads 
and sub-heads to discover that I could find in the 
cards nothing more recent and nothing else probably 
so good. A hasty search of the last two years of 
the American Journal of Theology gave me several 
items in about the same time. True, I had to wait 
while the magazine was sent for. This again is a 
challenge. We are making subject catalogs which 
break down of their own weight in general fields, 
while yielding satisfactory results in topics on which 
the literature is limited, either because of their ob¬ 
scurity or their individuality. Why not frankly 
face the situation and devise remedies? 

And yet on how many subjects do we find no 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


97 


entries or no recent books? How often do even our 
large catalogs fail us? Here again, despite all we 
have just said as to the bulk of our subject catalogs 
and the serious inconvenience it occasions, why not 
follow the plain lead of our author entries? We have 
the beginnings of an author list of titles in American 
libraries not in the Library of Congress. We have 
author and subject lists of books in the Library of 
Congress so far as the re-cataloging has gone. Why 
not procure enough copies of their cards from the 
other libraries which print to cover all their subject 
entries as well? The value of such an union sub¬ 
ject catalog is perhaps most quickly seen in such a 
field as biography. The question whether a life of 
some comparatively obscure person has been printed 
is one of the most difficult we are called on to answer. 
A subject card in such a list would settle at least 
that point. There are hosts of other questions 
which would be solved, or put in the way of solution, 
by such a union catalog. 

Remember, this is no proposal for anything un¬ 
reasonable or immensely difficult or costly. It is 
merely for an extension on definite lines of a work 
already well begun. The difficulties of reconciling 
conflicting entries in filing, and all the minor incon¬ 
veniences of such a* task I do not ignore. We are 
encountering them all the time, and solving them 
somehow. The value of the results is out of all 


98 


PROBLEMS IN LIBRARY WORK 


proportion to these difficulties. Even on the score 
of method in cataloging, such an opportunity for 
laboratory observation in comparative work would 
be worth creating, could we ignore the practical 
benefit to readers. That inter-library loans through¬ 
out the country would be at once greatly increased 
in number if such a union catalog of subjects and 
authors were to be found in the Library of Congress 
goes without saying. That the demand for infor¬ 
mation would soon make heavy inroads on the time 
of the Library of Congress staff is likewise certain. 
But that library has not shrunk from its duty to 
scholarship and learning in making public its own 
contents, nor will it, I am confident, long hesitate to 
aid in assembling and using material which shall 
show the inquirer—who has been patiently waiting 
all this time—where is to be found the book it does 
not have. 


TRAINING IN THE USE OF BOOKS 1 , 2 


It is my good fortune to have in my office in the 
Library of Congress a collection of books which recalls 
to me daily one of the great men of our country, a 
man whose memory is especially dear to Virginians, 
that most distinguished alumnus of the College of 
William and Mary, Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson 
spent much time and money in gathering a library. 
His efforts extended over many years. In a letter 
written in 1814 he described them as follows: 

. . . .You know my collection, its condition and extent. I 
have been fifty years making it, and have spared no pains, opportunity 
or expense, to make it what it is. While residing in Paris, I devoted 
every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two in examining 
all the principal bookstores, turning over every book in my hand, and 
putting by every thing which related to America, and indeed what¬ 
ever was rare and valuable in every science. Besides this, I had 
standing orders during the whole time I was in Europe, on its princi¬ 
pal book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid, and 
London, for such works relating to America as could not be found in 
Paris. So that, in that department particularly, such a collection 
was made as probably can never again be effected, because it is 
hardly probable that the same opportunities, the same time, industry, 
perseverance and expense, with the same knowledge of the bibliog¬ 
raphy of the subject would again happen to be in concurrence. 
During the same period, and after my return to America, I was led to 


1 An address delivered at the College of William and Mary. 

2 The Sewanee Review , July, 1912. 

99 



100 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


procure also whatever related to the duties of those in the high con¬ 
cerns of the nation. 

This collection gathered with so much pains by the 
former President was purchased by the Government in 
1815, and became the nucleus of the present Library 
of Congress. The greater part of that library had 
been destroyed in the previous August, when the 
Capitol was burned by the British troops. For many 
years Mr. Jefferson’s books formed the most useful 
and valuable portion of the collection, and even to-day 
certain of them are indispensable to investigators. 
The collection numbered about 7,000 volumes. The 
disastrous fire of 1851, which destroyed a large part 
of the library, proved especially destructive to Mr. 
Jefferson’s books; less than 2,500 survived, and the 
wear and tear of ninety-five years has reduced this 
number to 2,000. These, carefully preserved as the 
“Jefferson Collection,” remain a witness to the indus¬ 
try, learning, and zeal of the author of the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence. 

But fortunately we are not left to infer from this 
—less than one-third—the character of the remainder 
of the collection formed by Mr. Jefferson. Almost 
as soon as the books were put in place, a catalog of 
them was issued by the Library. This catalog was 
arranged in forty-four chapters, following the 
classification which Mr. Jefferson had himself devised, 
and which remained in effect with some minor 



TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


101 


changes, to the end of the century. The library 
revealed by the catalog of 1815 was undoubtedly 
one of the best in America at that day. It was 
strongest in law and in history, especially that of 
America, but it contained many valuable works and 
sets in philosophy, classical literature, theology, and 
belles-lettres. The books were of high character, and 
were mostly in good editions and sound bindings. 
When we reflect that it was bought largely in the 
midst of engrossing public duties, in time of war, and 
in great part under the disadvantage of remoteness 
from the bookmarkets of the old world, the marvel is 
that it was so good. 

In 1815 there were but few libraries of any size, 
public or private, in the United States. This col¬ 
lection of only 7,000 volumes ranked high in numbers. 
Harvard College could boast some 16,000 in 1790; 
the New York Society Library, about 14,000; the 
Library Company and Loganian Library of Phila¬ 
delphia, some 18,000; and the Library Society of 
Charleston, S. C., about 7,500. There may have been 
half a dozen other libraries of over 7,000 volumes 
scattered along the Atlantic seaboard. Private 
libraries numbering more than a few thousand books 
were rare, and Mr. Jefferson’s collection was a very 
notable one for that day. 

I say “for that day,” since the increase in the num¬ 
ber of libraries and in their size since 1815 has been 


102 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


little short of marvellous. There are to-day in the 
United States over 2,300 libraries having more than 
8,000 volumes each. Their total numbers reach well 
over eighty-five millions of volumes, and eleven mil¬ 
lion pamphlets, while in the year 1908 nearly twenty 
millions of persons are recorded as having actually 
read and studied in their reading-rooms. Over 
seventy-five million books were issued for home use 
from only 1,384 of these 2,300. There are now over 
10,000 persons employed in library work (including 
those charged with the care of buildings). Six libra¬ 
ries have more than 500,000 volumes; nine, more than 
300,000 but less than half a million; and sixty-two, 
less than 300,000 but more than 100,000. Thus 
there are to-day in our land seventy-seven libraries 
each one of which is more than fourteen times as 
large as was the Library of Congress when it started 
afresh with President Jefferson’s collection in 1815. 
And that Library has grown from this original 7,000 
to almost two million books and pamphlets, adding of 
late years over 100,000 volumes annually. More¬ 
over, the number of small collections, school, office, 
village, college, professional libraries, collections which 
are not included in this somewhat wearisome array 
of figures, has increased, if not proportionately, at 
least very greatly. There must be available for use 
to a greater or less degree in this country at least sixty- 
five millions of books—a figure which still falls far 
short of one to each inhabitant. 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


103 


Moreover, the production of books and of magazines 
has increased in about the same proportions. News¬ 
papers are probably no more numerous in proportion 
to the population than they were in the second decade 
of the nineteenth century, for most of the publishing 
activity of that day was shown in journalism. We 
have no reliable figures for the publication of books 
and pamphlets in that period of our history. The 
great scholarly bibliographies have dealt largely with 
the colonial period, and the bulky trade bibliographies 
begin much later. In the midst of the War of 1812 
and the impoverished condition which preceded and 
followed it, the publication of books was probably 
small. Moreover, it is, of course, a commonplace 
of history that the United States was almost wholly 
an agricultural country in 1815; and in communities 
devoted largely to farming, book publishing does not 
ordinarily flourish as it does in an industrial society. 
A few hundred books, perhaps a thousand or more 
pamphlets, probably made up the annual output of 
this country in 1815. In Europe the number was, 
of course, very much greater, although the period of 
the Napoleonic Wars was not favorable to extensive 
publishing. 

Contrast this meagre production with what has 
been aptly termed “our literary deluge.” In 1910 
there were published in the United States 13,470 
books, by 2,217 publishing firms. This number does 


104 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


not include “directories and similar publications, 
official publications (with a very few exceptions), 
or minor pamphlets.” Thus all but a few dozens of 
the thousands of publications of the national, state, 
and municipal governments are not counted in these 
figures, nor are the hosts of catalogs of schools 
and colleges and many valuable publications of socie¬ 
ties, such as year-books, annuals, bulletins, and jour¬ 
nals, all of them materials of some worth, which are 
certain to find a resting place on library shelves. No 
account is taken in arriving at this number, 13,470, 
by the Publishers 1 Weekly , of the extensive magazine 
output of the country, nor of the huge number of 
newspapers of all sorts. Therefore the formidable 
array of nearly fourteen thousand books produced in 
the United States in one year is far from being the 
whole number which is to be reckoned with. 

Great Britain produced, in 1910, 10,804 works; 
Germany, about 31,000; France, 12,615, and Italy, 
6,788. The Scandinavian countries, Austria, Spain, 
Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, and 
Turkey must have published among them at least twice 
as many as Italy, one would suppose, w r hile Australia, 
South Africa, and India will easily bring the total up 
to 85,000 works in European languages—not including 
the literary product of the great Slavic nations. This 
makes no account of the very considerable annual 
output of books on the Orient and in South America. 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


105 


We shall not be far wrong if we say that at the very 
least 100,000 books are printed each year, any one of 
which may perhaps be called for by a reader in one of 
our great libraries. 

This is a deluge indeed. What a contrast to the 
conditions of Mr. Jefferson’s day. Then the well- 
read man of letters or affairs, undisturbed by tele¬ 
grams, cables, newspaper extras, telephone calls, 
ticker bulletins, automobile honks, next month’s 
magazines, or “red-hot” fiction, could sit down to a 
leisurely perusal of the books his agent had sent him 
from Philadelphia or London, could re-read the clas¬ 
sics, could keep abreast of the best thought of the day 
with reasonable success, and could master the contents 
of a library of 7,000 volumes with the comfortable 
assurance that he had read the majority of the best 
works of the world of letters. 

That day has passed. The scholar of to-day is 
ever fearful lest he shall have missed the latest trea¬ 
tise on his little specialty, which yet, despite its limi¬ 
tations, has a literature of its own. The average man 
of intelligence is well-nigh helpless before the mass of 
books in even a minor library. The craze for the 
“latest” novel, the most “up-to-date” reference book, 
is the characteristic note of the present demand for 
books. How, in the face of this flood, shall the young 
man of our day find his bearings; how shall he ride the 
flood a master; by virtue of what training shall he 


106 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


make it serve him, carry him to his goal, aid him in 
his life work? How shall he avoid being overwhelmed 
by numbers, misled by cheap newness, misguided by 
advertising, and lost in a wilderness of printed matter 
when he essays to work in a modern library or to 
attempt the mastery of any important question? 
This is my theme: training in the use of hooks , the 
acquiring of a scholar’s attitude toward the printed 
page. Its timeliness is proven by every library bulle¬ 
tin, every publisher’s announcement, by the experi¬ 
ence of every teacher, and, I fear I must add, by the 
painful witness of much incompetent and careless 
journalism, and the enormous profits of the publishers 
of cheaply made subscription books. 

How that training may be obtained, and where it 
shall begin, I shall endeavor to set forth briefly, in 
the hope that such a theme cannot fail to be of inter¬ 
est to all connected with education. 

We may begin with the child in school. Now 
certain elementary facts about books one naturally 
supposes everybody observes and knows. And yet 
experience shows that most school children—and 
many of their elders, for that matter—are seldom 
acquainted with the basic fact that a book has an 
author. To them a book is a book; their arithmetic 
is their arithmetic book; not Robinson’s, or Smith’s, 
or Wentworth’s, or anybody else’s arithmetic. No¬ 
body ever points out to them the fact that their text- 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


107 


book was written by anyone, and they usually know 
it by the color or by the name of the teacher in whose 
class they used it. This curious ignorance on the part 
of school children was first brought to my notice years 
ago, when examining orally a large number of can¬ 
didates for entrance to a college and to its preparatory 
department. Out of nearly a hundred young people 
ranging from twelve to twenty, not one was able to 
tell us the names of the writers of all the text-books 
he had used during the previous term, and few, very 
few, knew the names of any of the authors. The 
answers were so extremely vague in most cases as to 
lead me—in my inexperience—to doubt seriously 
whether there had been any actual study of the vari¬ 
ous subjects. “We had the same grammar every¬ 
body uses;” “The English history was a little green 
book,” was the kind of reply my questioning elicited. 
And yet these same young folk did well in their classes, 
and gave evidence of having really worked at the mat¬ 
ter of these books concerning whose makers they had 
so little knowledge. Perhaps the matter is the all- 
important thing, but the poor author who gave it form 
—I speak for all makers of text-books—deserves the 
reward of at least a bowing acquaintance. And 
the indifference to the author in the school days is 
too frequently carried over into later life. It is an 
indifference fostered by the anonymous journalism 
of the day, whose remote results are seen in part in 


108 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


the greedy devouring in our great circulating libraries 
of any trash that is called a novel. Perhaps the 
irresponsibility of school children as respects their 
author and his work was never better shown than by 
an incident which has always stood in my mind as the 
finest example of ineffective teaching I have met with. 
A young girl of my acquaintance, on being asked in 
what grade she was in school, said she was in the third 
year of the high school. “Then you have been read¬ 
ing Cicero’s Orations against Catiline?” “Well,” was 
the meditative answer, “we have been reading some¬ 
body’s orations about Catiline; I guess they were 
Cicero’s, but whether they were for or against Catil¬ 
ine, I don’t remember.” 

If the author deserves to be known to his readers, 
the title of his book likewise claims a certain attention. 
Doubtless it is a less important detail than the other, 
but nevertheless not wholly negligible. Here again 
the child in school generally receives small aid and 
comfort from his teacher. The beginning of a proper 
training in the use of books comes when children are 
taught that books are written by people, have a 
definite name, and frequently appear in different 
forms. We hear much in pedagogic circles of training 
in observation. That observation may well begin 
with such elementary details as these. 

Any librarian will testify that titles are more fre¬ 
quently remembered than authors, but that they are 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


109 


seldom remembered correctly. The girl who demands 
the red book her sister had last month is sometimes 
less puzzling than the woman who calls insistently 
for the book entitled: For Better or For Worse, 
finally going off contented with Miss Johnston’s 
To Have and to Hold, remarking complacently that 
she knew it was something out of the marriage service. 

It is not too much to expect that school children 
may have it pointed out by someone that a book 
generally has a table of contents and an index. I 
wonder how many teachers ever do this? How fre¬ 
quently do we find children helplessly turning the 
pages, looking in vain for some half-forgotten passage! 
Makers of text-books generally provide indexes and 
tables, and presumably teachers use them, but too 
seldom are children systematically taught the neces¬ 
sity and use of these keys to the contents of a book. 

If we can secure some such early training in observ¬ 
ing and understanding the primal factors in the make¬ 
up of a book, we may surely demand also of teachers 
some sort of instruction in elementary discrimination 
between books. Books are not like bricks, or bales 
of cotton, or bolts of cloth—a fundamental fact 
which is not always clear to business men in estimating 
the cost of handling and buying them. Each book is a 
separate entity—a mass of paper, to be sure, on which 
there are certain impressions in ink, but much more 
than that, the physical expression of someone’s 


110 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


thought. Now if the child has learned that some man 
or woman wrote his text-book, he has grasped the 
prime element in discriminating between books. 
Given one man’s work, he may be aware that another 
man has done the same sort of thing. Hence the 
necessity of knowing how well each has done it, in 
order to make a choice. But while the selection of 
books is perhaps too serious a matter to enter into 
this primary training in the use of books, the knowl¬ 
edge of what field or parts of a field different books 
cover, is not. Moreover, this knowledge—derived, 
of course, from a study of the table of contents; for 
one seems naturally to come back always to the 
elements—is of extreme practical importance. The 
sooner a boy learns that not all American histories 
come down to the year 1912, and that there are numer¬ 
ous histories devoted to small periods of time, the 
better for him. That the author has a plan and pur¬ 
pose in writing and that two books apparently on the 
same topic may be written from absolutely different 
points of view and for different ends, he will discover, 
if only he is made to read prefaces and introductions. 
If a child once fairly enters into the idea that an author 
writes for a particular class—as for children; or for a 
particular purpose, as in a purely outline or elemen¬ 
tary history; or from a motive of his own, as a defence 
of his own conduct or the exposition of a theory,— 
he has begun to discriminate between books. When 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


111 


he has once begun, he will not be likely to cease. 
And he will, by virtue of this training, be in the way 
to acquire an intelligent attitude toward books, a 
knowledge that they are made by people who 
differ in gifts and in purpose, in ability and in 
design. Moreover, he will not be led into the 
very common error of assuming that a well-known 
book is necessarily the book he wants. It is a 
fact to which all librarians will bear witness that the 
average man who wants to know something in Eng¬ 
lish history asks for Macaulay’s History, in entire 
ignorance of the fact that it is devoted largely to the 
reign of James II. So Gibbon is asked for by persons 
who wish to know something about the Gracchi, 
and Carlyle’s French Revolution for the later career 
of Napoleon. Such elementary training as that which 
I have urged would do away with this kind of error. 

The use of elementary books of reference is more 
common in schools than is this training in observa¬ 
tion. No school room beyond the sixth grade is 
complete without a dictionary and an atlas. But 
very few teachers realize what a wealth of information 
is contained in a modern dictionary, or train their 
pupils to find it. I may safely say also that they fail 
to train them so well and thoroughly in the order of 
the alphabet that it becomes second-nature to them— 
a key to arrangement of all sorts of books and cata¬ 
logs, which they will need to use all their lives. I 


112 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


know I am on forbidden ground here, and that it is 
unfashionable in these days to teach the alphabet. 
But I am thankful that I “learned my letters” when 
a child. I do not insist on that process as a prelimi¬ 
nary to learning to read—but very soon after a child 
has learned to read, he should be drilled in the alpha¬ 
bet as a set of symbols. When he has learned this, 
he is ready to use a dictionary or an encyclopaedia. 
Now the wonders of a modern unabridged dictionary 
are not revealed to the casual observer. But they 
are a constant source of delight to children—I speak 
from experience—and of information to the teacher. 
A little training here will reveal to a bright child 
possibilities of which he will be eager to take advan¬ 
tage later. And how few children are trained to use by 
way of quick consultation their atlases or the maps in 
their geographies. Here is a fertile field for ingenuity 
and resource on the part of teachers. I find very 
few grown people who use atlases with speed and 
certainty. Usually an uncertain finger wanders over 
the map in search of the name of the desired place. 
The letters and figures in the margin, the indexes, 
the table of contents, they ignore. And yet how 
simple are these devices. They are so easily used that 
children when once introduced to their meaning make 
a game of locating a town, a river, a county. 

This elementary sort of training can reasonably be 
expected of all pupils who complete the primary 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


113 


course. The ordinary text-book, the dictionary, the 
atlas, are all the vehicles, all the apparatus required 
for conveying it. There is no need of an elaborate 
library or much formal training, and yet the results 
of the teacher’s occasional direction and careful super¬ 
vision will show later all the difference between a blind 
following of a set of printed formulas, and a discrimi¬ 
nating and intelligent attitude toward a book. 

Not all children who reach our secondary schools 
find in them good school libraries. We have been 
slow to realize the need of a school library in the curri¬ 
culum of the high school, and the importance of its 
function in the scheme of secondary education. And 
even where books have been provided generously, 
there has been but little appreciation of the possibili¬ 
ties of training which are latent in even a small collec¬ 
tion. Too often the care of the high school library 
has been an added burden placed on an already heav¬ 
ily-taxed teacher, or has been left to the ignorant 
enthusiasm of some bright pupil. Within the past 
twenty years many of our larger cities have been 
appointing librarians for the high school libraries. 
Moreover, in a few places these librarians have 
become what they should all be, teachers of the art of 
using books. Slowly, under the influence of some of 
our state library commissions, and of some enlightened 
high school principals, teachers and school authorities 
are beginning to see that the school library affords 


114 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


a basis for learning how to use books in collections 
throughout life. Not alone is this knowledge abso¬ 
lutely needed as an aid to modern instruction in liter¬ 
ature, history, and science, but it is even more valuable 
as furnishing the means whereby pupils may become 
adepts in the use of libraries, an art which has been 
won by most of us through hard knocks, but which 
can be taught very simply and effectively. Let us 
not forget the necessity for that art in modern life, 
the flood of books with which the pupil will have to 
struggle later. In the secondary school he can and 
should learn the elements of dealing with books in 
libraries, and when he comes to college he should not 
be helpless, but happy in the opportunity to make 
quick and efficient use of a library of fifty, one hundred, 
or even five hundred thousand volumes. 

He should learn by formal instruction of the high 
school librarian—instruction which, to my knowledge, 
is now given with great success in many schools— 
that books have to be arranged or classified on some 
sort of a system. Usually they are grouped on the 
principle of likeness—those treating of the same theme 
being placed together. If he once grasps that idea 
and its corollary—that as one book can go only in 
one place, it must be placed with those books which 
it most resembles—he will quickly understand 
classification notations, and will not be baffled by 
figures, letters, or decimal points. He should also 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


115 


learn the use of a simple catalog on cards, and 
should master the principle of alphabetical arrange¬ 
ment. If a boy knows how to use the card catalog of 
a high school library, there is no reason why he cannot 
use easily any other catalog, even so huge a thing as 
the card catalog of the Library of Congress with 
its two thousand trays and its hundreds of thousands 
of entries. 

In the secondary school also the pupils can easily 
learn the use of the indexes to magazines. Few tools 
are more helpful than Poole’s Index and the Reader’s 
Guide to Periodical Literature. There is no reason 
why they should not be known to all high school 
students, even although the greater part of the vol¬ 
umes indexed are not in the school or town library. 

When he is ready for college, therefore, a young man 
may reasonably be supposed to have an elementary 
equipment in the use of books, if only his teachers have 
deliberately tried to give it to him. No extensive 
apparatus, no costly library no great amount of time 
are needed. Careful and tactful teaching of the 
habit of using books as tools; an intelligent direction 
of the pupiFs attitude toward the books he has at 
hand; the fullest possible use of the school library 
under competent guidance—these are all that a train¬ 
ing in the use of books demands as a beginning. It 
is easy to estimate the advantage which a student 
thus equipped has over one who has known books 


116 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


merely as printed matter containing certain infor¬ 
mation which he has more or less reluctantly acquired, 
and whose ability to use books in collections is abso¬ 
lutely a negative quantity. 

It is a stock complaint against our modern colleges 
that they do not acquaint students with the great 
literatures of the world. Education for culture is 
said not to exist, or at least not to succeed. What¬ 
ever measure of truth may be found in this contention, 
it may be worth while to point out that the old-fash¬ 
ioned college course of four years, rigid and arid as it 
was, failed even more completely than that of to-day 
to introduce students either to the great literatures 
of Greece and Rome—small samples of which were 
minutely and painfully dissected daily—or to those of 
the modern languages. In few cases in the earlier 
two-thirds of the nineteenth century was the routine 
of text-book recitation or formal lecture abandoned 
in favor of a wide comparison of authorities or an 
independent study of the literature of a period. If 
I do not read amiss educational history and the 
reminiscences of our fathers, the old-fashioned col¬ 
lege course was certainly not that “good old time” to 
which educational reformers would hark back. Cer¬ 
tainly no young man in any American college had an 
opportunity to study in the forties, or even in the 
sixties, such topics as the Romantic Movement in 
German literature, the French Chansons de Geste, 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


117 


or the Greek dialectic poets, topics which appear in 
catalogues as sample elective courses in colleges of no 
great size or extraordinary resources. 

We should be far wrong, however, did we infer that 
the old-fashioned college with its small faculty, its 
rigid curriculum, its hard and fast class lines, failed to 
foster a love for literature and reading. There was 
more leisure for reading, both on the part of students 
and faculty. There was almost without exception an 
abundance of life in the literary and debating socie¬ 
ties—organizations which are not everywhere vigorous 
to-day. Athletics did not absorb so much of the 
energy of the student-body, and it is probably true 
that there was more reading on individual initiative 
than there is to-day, when formal instruction is found 
in so much wider a range of subjects, even in the small¬ 
est colleges. 

In fact, the modern college and university have bred 
a peculiar attitude toward books on the part of stud¬ 
ents. Certain books are required to be read for 
entrance in English—books which are the birthright 
of all who speak the English tongue. And many a lad 
reads and cons notes on Quentin Durward , or Ivanhoe , 
or the Princess , in about the spirit in which boys read 
the immortal commentaries of Julius Caesar. “ Col¬ 
lateral reading” has been run so hard that books to 
be used in a certain course have become merely an 
adjunct—Professor So-and-so’s books—and are even 


118 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


less than a text-book in the eyes of the student. 
Worse than that, the seminar and departmental libra¬ 
ries have had too frequently a deleterious influence on 
the advanced student. No other books interest him 
—if they are not in the seminar library, they are not 
worth while. Instead of broadening his range of 
knowledge, this very convenient grouping of certain 
books as tools, tends to restrict it. Lest I may seem 
to exaggerate, I will illustrate by an anecdote which 
came under my observation. A certain very dis¬ 
tinguished professor in one of our largest universities 
by some unusual chance wandered so far from his 
seminar that he came on the general card catalog of 
the university library. “How convenient and admir¬ 
able a thing this catalog is,” said he, after half an 
hour’s study of it; “I must have it copied for the 
economics seminar.” 

There results too frequently, from this and other 
influences, an attitude of indifference toward the 
college library on the part of students. I have 
watched students who came every day for weeks to 
read certain required books, and have never seen them 
read anything else—doubtless it was true that they 
had not the time. I have seen the graduate student 
stick to the seminar until it grew to represent the 
world of letters to him. I have regretfully noted the 
presence in laboratories of students of the sciences for 
hours every day—hours so long that they never had a 


TRAINING IN USE OE BOOKS 


119 


glimpse of any cultural reading. And—I fear I must 
say it —horribile dictul —I have known boys who 
passed an entire four years in a college with 350,000 
books in its library, and who in those four years never 
entered its doors. 

Now a large part of this indifference is the result of 
at least two factors: the lack of the sort of training in 
the secondary schools which I have been emphasizing, 
and the almost criminal indifference on the part of 
college and university authorities, including their 
librarians, I fear—toward the development of cul¬ 
tural reading and the sense of mastery of books. 
Plunge an untrained boy into a library of thirty, fifty, 
or hundred thousands books—how is he to pick and 
choose, how shall he get his start? He needs formal 
instruction in the rudiments, nay, even in the refine¬ 
ments, of bibliography. In the German universities 
the professor usually lectures at the beginning of each 
course on the bibliography of the subject he is about to 
discuss before the class during the semester. Those 
lectures are generally the most highly prized and 
faithfully attended of the course. The custom has 
had some notable imitators in America, and I have 
always been profoundly grateful that most of my 
professors at Michigan followed this practice as a 
matter of course. Within the past few years Prince¬ 
ton has been going much further in the work of her 
“preceptors.” Here and there a college librarian 


120 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


has with more or less success given lectures on the use 
of the library and on bibliography. If we will con¬ 
sider the literary deluge of the day, the ever growing 
number of books in our college libraries, we shall 
perceive the positive necessity for methods differing 
alike from the indifference and the ways of the past. 

To go into details of those methods would be unprof¬ 
itable here. They have never been worked out with 
more than fair success, but I think I may say that 
college librarians and college professors alike are 
earnestly studying them; are experimenting, and 
testing ways and means. The college library must 
deliberately spend thought and money in advertising 
its wares, and must interpose as few obstacles as 
possible between its books and its readers. 

What should result from such a bibliographic train¬ 
ing? How should a young man, equipped as we would 
have him, face the library and the out-pourings of the 
press? He should, it seems to me, show first a cer¬ 
tain readiness and ease among books; he should treat 
them all as at least distant acquaintances who may 
become friends any day. He does not know them, 
perhaps, but he knows where they live and why they 
live there, and what they purport to do for a living; 
and he is not any more surprised than he is with peo¬ 
ple to learn that some are existing largely on their 
past reputation; others are leading a double life, and a 
few are not too reliable or no better than they should 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


121 


be. Secondly, he should know well and familiarly 
those directories and those elite lists, social registers if 
you please, of the world of letters—which tell him 
both where anybody may be found, or where the 
best books of any sort dwell. He should—to drop our 
metaphor—use easily bibliographic tools of all sorts 
from the simple check list to the erudite works of 
Fabricius and Poggendorf. And he should know 
the literature of his own subject more than fairly well. 
Only thus will he become possessed of the historic 
sense and of the man’s attitude toward the printed 
page. He will realize that books are but imperfect 
media of arriving at knowledge after all, and that he 
must put himself into them if he is to profit by them. 
He will need little assistance from librarians, but will 
not hesitate to ask questions when he needs help. 

Of greater value than any facility in the use of 
catalogues, bibliographies, and indexes, will be the 
ability to judge of the comparative merits of books 
both new and old. If he has learned to read the 
great reviews, to appreciate to some extent the per¬ 
sonal equations of authors, publishers, and reviewers, 
—not omitting a suspicion of the power of advertising, 
even in scientific subjects—if he has acquired some 
criteria for forming judgments of his own, he has 
gained from the college library, from the college pro¬ 
fessor, from his fellow students (especially in debate), 
from his earlier training, an attitude toward books 


122 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


which defies definition, but which may perhaps be 
best termed discriminating. Such a man cannot be 
“dated” in later life by the opinions and views of his 
day in college. He is equipped to cope both with 
books, and, to a lesser degree, with men. 

But highly as I rate the power to work easily and 
familiarly with books in collections, I am not unaware 
that there lurk certain serious dangers in this very 
familiarity and facility. It is the peculiar vice of 
librarians—even more characteristic than their pro¬ 
pensity to talk shop—that as they know intimately 
the backs of so many books, they are likely to per¬ 
suade themselves that they know their contents as 
well. The temptation is subtle and powerful, and its 
operations are not confined to the custodian of books. 
Let no one deceive himself into thinking that because 
he knows the royal road to learning, its guide posts, 
its directories, its ins and outs, the various vehicles 
that carry men on it, he is necessarily travelling there¬ 
on himself. There is no virtue and no praise in this 
knowledge, if it is not applied to help either oneself or 
another to actual progress. 

No one is really trained in the use of books who has 
not made himself master of a few books. His facility 
in the use of many books should and must leave him 
the leisure which is needful to absorb certain great 
works, to read himself into them, to make them part of 
his very being. What these books should be is not a 


TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 


123 


matter for dogmatism. One man will feed his soul 
on Shakespeare, and another on Newton’s Principia. 
But certain works should become a part of the very 
nature of every man of our race, whatever his profes¬ 
sion, who dares call himself educated. The English 
Bible is still the greatest work in the English tongue. 
The youth who reaches maturity without a thorough 
knowledge of its wonderful prose and poetry, and its 
message of personal religion and of duty toward God 
and man, has missed the greatest intellectual and 
moral training the language affords. I care not how 
he interprets it. Let him know the Bible from cover 
to cover, and consider his own relation to it what he 
will. 

There are other English books, too, which no man 
can afford not to know, and know intimately. Shake¬ 
speare and Milton among the poets; Bacon and Addi¬ 
son and Emerson among essayists; Green, Macaulay, 
and Parkman among the historians, are but a few of 
the names which suggest themselves at once. And 
who dares affirm himself wholly ignorant of Homer 
and Vergil, of Dante, and of Goethe and Schiller, of 
Cervantes and of Montaigne? The man who has 
not as a boy devoted himself to the reading and re¬ 
reading of at least a few of the world’s great books is 
but poorly prepared to cope with the literary deluge 
of our day or with the plausible sophistries of the time. 
He has necessarily a low standard of literary judg- 


124 TRAINING IN USE OF BOOKS 

ment. He has sold his birthright of noble books for 
a mess of pottage whose chief ingredients are Sunday 
newspapers and illustrated weeklies. 

With this caution, this admonition to think on the 
high things of the world of letters, I reach my conclu¬ 
sion. He that is faithful to the mastering of a few 
great books will use easily the tools provided for 
handling the lesser books. Secure in the possession 
of some works which the ages have tested, he will 
welcome the good in the mass of new books, will make 
the indifferent, or even the bad, serve his need without 
lowering himself to its level, will show his training in 
the use of books not alone in the ease with which he 
masters bookish problems or acquires information, 
but much more in the character of his thinking and 
in the standard of his judgments. 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 1 


It may not be improper to preface this discourse by 
saying that the subject was assigned by the Director 
when he asked me to speak to you. I do not know 
that I should myself have chosen this topic, nor do I 
feel that my authority to speak on it may be unques¬ 
tioned. But I am very glad to have this opportunity 
of a plain word on a proposition which (it would 
seem to most librarians) should almost go unques¬ 
tioned. It may be also that I can approach it with 
less bias than one who is earning his daily bread by 
cataloging. I am earning mine (in part) by using 
catalogs, and have been doing so for ten years past. 
And as a sort of “ultimate consumer” of the cata¬ 
loged wares, I may be entitled to say what I think of 
his product, and of how much value I find it in my 
daily work. 

But before we begin to talk about the relative 
value of the various phases of the librarian’s calling, it 
is highly desirable that we ask ourselves just what 
that calling is. I take it that the ultimate goal of 
most of you as students of this library school is the 
administration in an organized way of a collection of 
books for the benefit of a community of some sort. 

1 An address to the New York State Library School, May 1, 1915. 

125 


126 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


It has been the distinction of this library school that 
it has produced administrators. If you look at that 
ambition carefully, you will see that it involves several 
elements. There is the executive side of a librarian’s 
duties, the successful management of specialists and 
the adaptation of their product to the community’s 
needs. There is the actual performance of the techni¬ 
cal processes of library work, the strictly “profes¬ 
sional” side. Successful librarianship is really good 
engineering. A civil or mechanical, or hydraulic 
engineer must be a scientifically trained man. He 
must be a capable administrator. Shorn of either 
part of his equipment, he falls into comparative insig¬ 
nificance, even into failure. Just so the successful 
librarian is necessarily a compound of technical skill, 
acquaintance with technical processes, and admin¬ 
istrative ability. The mere man of affairs seldom 
attains complete mastery of any profession. If he 
did, there would be no need for technical training in 
schools of any sort. The mere grubbet, however 
faithful, in any technical pursuit seldom blossoms 
into a capable director of large enterprises. Library 
work has developed a multitude of technical processes 
in the last thirty years. Simultaneously it has 
changed from rather small to rather big undertakings, 
with large plants, many branches, and budgets of 
considerable size. In all this, of what value is a 
knowledge of cataloging? 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


127 


Instead of attempting to answer this question dog¬ 
matically, we may perhaps find it profitable to glance 
hastily at some phases of what is popularly referred to 
in professional circles as “the library movement.” 
Those of us whose memory goes back even a quarter 
of a century or who have studied at all carefully the 
history of libraries in the United States have seen, 
or noted, a good many changes. The library world 
has had its shifting fashions, not to say its fads of the 
hour. And, just as in more common matters of 
clothes and manners, the striking novelties are sure to 
attract a good deal of attention and to get themselves 
much advertised. In the earlier years of the public 
library movement, those days before the Centennial 
and the Library Journal, the art of cataloging and the 
making of catalogs in book form was much honored 
and much practised. In fact it stood second only to 
the art and practice of advantageous book-buying. 
You will find that even very small libraries printed 
rather elaborate catalogs of their books, catalogs 
which are now almost forgotten of the foot that 
passeth by. The larger institutions such as the Astor, 
the Boston Athenaeum, the Brooklyn Library, not to 
mention others, brought out catalogs which are still 
worthy monuments to their compilers. The earlier 
meetings of the Library Association, the earlier vol¬ 
umes of the Library Journal are full of discussions of 
cataloging practice. Lind erf el t and Perkins and Cut- 


128 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


ter printed separate (and very diverse) codes of rules; 
and these are but three of a score. It is hard even for 
a careful student of cataloging to realize how much the 
practice of the art was simplified and made uniform 
by this very excess of discussion and effort. Classi¬ 
fication and cataloging occupied the major part of the 
curriculum in the early years of training in library 
science. They were definite matters which could 
be taught, and they were controverted subjects which 
awakened intense partisanship. 

In the early nineties it was very evident that there 
had come to pass a great change in the thought of 
librarians about their work. Up to the time of the 
World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893 their attention had 
been—I think we may safely say—largely centered 
in the internal management of their libraries, on 
such matters as bookstacks and binding, cataloging 
and classifying, charging and registration systems. 
Of course I do not mean that other matters did not 
occupy thought and receive attention, but we may 
truly say that the emphasis was on the internal side. 
In the next few years two other matters began to forge 
ahead—buildings and library extension. And then 
followed with almost alarming rapidity a sudden 
expansion of the activities of the library in every 
external relation. First the story hour and children’s 
work was the great discovery, then traveling libraries 
and commission work, then branch libraries sprang up 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


129 


almost like the dragon’s teeth of the fable; work 
with schools, with clubs, with every form of social 
organization which could use books. Today it is 
legislative reference work which is the fad of the hour 
—destined doubtless to grow into a usefully organized 
branch of library work, but still unformed, and (tell 
it not in Gath!) perhaps a trifle self-important and 
cocksure of its value. 

Right in the midst of all this sudden expansion in 
various directions came the practical realization of 
the dreams of theorists of an earlier day in the estab¬ 
lishment of the Card Distribution work of the Library 
of Congress. The unifying and clarifying of catalog¬ 
ing method brought about by the long and arduous 
labors of the American Library Association's Com¬ 
mittee on Catalog Rules and the creation of a great 
central cataloging bureau at Washington mark the 
opening of the twentieth century in American library 
history. As the last fifteen years have seen the slow 
growth of the card stock from nothing to 675,000 
titles, so the energy, the will power, the force that 
used to go into the production of catalog cards in each 
library have been (to a great degree) turned into 
other channels. So also has the cataloging product 
moved along the line of least resistance. The Car¬ 
negie Library of Pittsburgh is almost the sole large 
American library that ventures to put out a book 
catalog. When you come to take account of the 


130 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


change that has taken place since 1900, it is little 
short of marvelous. Seventy-five per cent of the 
cards needed in the various libraries of the country 
are being supplied by the Library of Congress. \ It is 
not unnatural, in fact it is almost inevitable, that 
there should have come a lessening of interest in cata¬ 
loging work, and even a dearth of catalogers.\ 

I say this is not unnatural. But it is none the less 
unfortunate. The successful adaptation of a manu¬ 
factured product is seldom as interesting as the mak¬ 
ing itself. The remnant of books for which cards 
can not be had which must still be laboriously cata¬ 
loged in each library is not usually the most attractive 
portion of the yearly accessions. The knotty prob¬ 
lems, the intricate questions, the perpetual rendering 
of decisions which make cataloging an ever fresh and 
novel game are vanishing with each entry decided and 
reduced to print at Washington. Bibliography is 
claiming the attention of those whose bent is toward 
the strictly bookish side of our calling. Catalogs 
and catalogers are not in the forefront of library 
thought. In fact a certain impatience with them and 
their wares is to be detected in many quarters. 
Shallow folk are inclined to belittle the whole catalog¬ 
ing business. And there have not been wanting per¬ 
sons to sit in the seat of the scornful. 

How true it is that we can not see the wood for the 
trees! Here we have gone on losing interest in 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


131 


catalogs, and before our eyes they have grown to 
amazing proportions. Year by year we have been 
adding huge numbers of books to all our libraries. 
We have established more and more branches. We 
have split up into departments within the library. 
We have necessarily multiplied records almost with¬ 
out limit. We have office catalogs, shelf lists, card 
indexes, public catalogs until nobody knows what will 
be the end. We have continued to use an instrument 
whose value for small collections is well established, 
and we have built it up until it fairly threatens to 
break down of its own size and weight. We have 
tacitly abandoned catalogs in book form. But we 
have not seemed to realize that all our skill and all our 
abilities are now needed to make our huge card cata¬ 
logs workable. We shall need every bit of energy, 
vigor, and knowledge that we possess to adapt the 
card catalog to libraries in the future. Instead of 
releasing us from an obligation, instead of making 
the proper record of our books a matter of mere rou¬ 
tine, the universal use of the printed cards demands 
of us librarians new zeal, new skill, and an added 
technique. Problems of selection, of arrangement, 
of display, of interpretation of the catalog are pres¬ 
sing hard upon us. The cataloger must be an ad¬ 
ministrator if he is to meet the needs of the future: 
and the administrator can not afford to be ignorant of 
these problems of cataloging, which must be solved. 


132 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


Perhaps I may bring this home to you with more 
force by some consideration of the practical use of 
catalogs. For it is as a working tool that I would 
have you consider the catalog. It is not primarily a 
record—renfember that! Libraries keep some sort 
of accessions record for business ends. But they make 
catalogs for the use of their readers. The point is 
vital. Unless you think of the catalog as an instru¬ 
ment, you lose entirely the point of view of modern 
cataloging practice. It is an instrument whereby 
one can find out—if he knows how—whether the 
library has a book he wants, or whether it has any 
books on some topic he is interested in. It may be 
used for scores of other purposes, but these two are 
the prime reasons for its existence. 

Now no instrument can always be worked easily, 
safely and successfully by the chance comer. Herein 
lies much of the difficulty found in the use of card 
catalogs. 

For who uses a card catalog? For whom is it 
made? This is the real crux of much of the current 
discussion of the merits—and failings—of that 
machine. Obviously it is not for the way-faring 
man: equally obviously not for the child just entering 
school. Clearly persons who wish to read or study 
some definite book or some subject are the normal 
users of card catalogs. For the idle or the curious 
browser these are the open shelves; for the fiction 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


133 


seeker, the finding list and more open shelves; for the 
child, the children’s room; for the man in haste, the 
reference collection and its attendants. What a 
change from a generation ago! I remember too well 
my despair at searching an author catalog for “some¬ 
thing to read” on a Saturday night in my Alma 
Mater’s library, where were no open shelves, no 
circulation, no reference collection, and no lists of 
fiction. Is it not plain that these developments of 
the past twenty years have accompanied the supplant¬ 
ing of the old book catalog and finding list and their 
replacement by the card catalog? Is it not a perfectly 
fair statement that in the users of a card catalog there 
may be presumed some modicum of intelligence and a 
more than passing interest in some topic? I do not 
believe that the card catalog can ever be made so 
easy of operation, especially in this day of huge libra¬ 
ries, that every chance comer can handle it success¬ 
fully without some instruction. Nor is it intended 
primarily for the curious or the hurried reader. It is 
a tool demanding some deftness in its use. More 
than that, for most inquiries reaching beyond the stage 
of the merely obvious, it is a most complicated instru¬ 
ment requiring great skill and long practice in the 
searcher. 

But why is the catalog a complex and difficult in¬ 
strument? Why is it not simple and easy to operate? 
Why should it not be so sensibly made that the way- 


134 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


faring man—though a fool—need not err therein? 
What are catalogers, anyway, that they set up rules 
and practices difficult for the ordinary man to follow? 
These and such like other questions are always with 
us. They are insistently put forward. They must 
be met, even in a library school. 

There is just one plain and truthful answer to these 
questions. Catalogs are complex because people and 
books are complex. Catalogs are not simple, because 
people and books are not simple. If each book were 
written by one person, who never changed his name 
from the way it appeared on the title page of his first 
book; if each book were published at some plainly 
designated place and on a date explicitly set forth; 
if there were but one edition permitted; if there were 
no societies, clubs, universities, journals, academies, 
legislatures, governments issuing books; if all reprints, 
separates, and pre-prints could be prevented, then, 
and only then, might catalogs become simple—on 
their author side. But you all know, everybody 
knows, that the reverse of this is the actual state of 
things. Go to your order department and scan the 
first truckload you meet of books coming in. Unless 
you find a batch of current novels just from the press, 
I venture to say you will find that half the truck-load, 
at least, qan not be cataloged “simply.” Every 
possible variety and mode of publication will meet 
you in any large library. Divergent forms of sur- 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


135 


name, and of forename; governmental, institutional 
and society publications; serials and series; news¬ 
papers and magazines; reprints, new editions, trans¬ 
lations, abridgments, commentaries; official and non¬ 
official reports; dissertations and programs; authors 
dead a couple of thousand years, and others just 
beginning to write; a jumble of every possible sort of 
responsibility for the appearance of things in print. 
And somehow these must be treated with a degree of 
uniformity and common sense which shall make it an 
easy task to rush to the catalog and identify any one 
of them! 

But what of the subject side? Can that be treated 
“simply?” Again apply the test of experiment. Go 
over your truck-load of new books. Remember that 
the subjects you are going to assign to them must fit 
in with those already given to thousands of other 
books now in the library. Remember also that the 
subject-headings assigned must strike an average 
between the needs of the specialist and the novice. 
And more, that you must keep in mind the writer’s 
point of view as well. Is this any easy task to be 
turned off in a half-hour by any “sensible” person? 
You will find it much harder than the job of deciding 
who wrote the books. I repeat, the complexity of 
cataloging at the present day arises from the com¬ 
plicated and involved problems presented by the 
books themselves. The rules and the practice are 


136 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


vastly simpler than they were sixty years ago. If you 
don’t believe me, try to apply Panizzi’s Rules to the 
next set of books you come on, and contrast the re¬ 
sult with that of the American Library Association’s 
Rules. 

One of the favorite arguments of certain folk who 
think cataloging an expensive and much over-lauded 
luxury of the profession is that book-sellers and auc¬ 
tioneers make perfectly intelligible catalogs at a very 
low cost. Now I have been checking and searching 
such catalogs for many years, and I venture to say 
that as a rule they are the worst made product of the 
cataloger’s art. Their careless entries, their suppres¬ 
sion of names, their inaccurate proof-reading render 
it almost impossible at times to discover the fact that 
you really have the book advertised. It requires a 
specially developed detective ability to unearth the 
actual book hidden beneath their frequently seduc¬ 
tive entries. Every large library has paid dearly 
for the errors of the book-sellers’ “simple” cataloging. 
And every such library develops a set of assistants who 
can “search” the catalog for alluring items to the 
great benefit of the library’s purse. You can not, 
then, do order work (and a large share of reference 
work) successfully unless you are particularly well 
versed not only in cataloging as conducted in your 
own library, but as it has been practiced by genera¬ 
tions of book-sellers and bibliographers. 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


137 


I might go on to show that in almost every branch 
of library work a knowledge of cataloging is practi¬ 
cally essential. From the moment a book is sugges ted 
for purchase until it lands in the hands of the first 
reader there are a number of processes to be gone 
through, as you of course know. Almost all of these 
(save the merely mechanical) call for an acquaintance 
with rules of entry, increasing with the size of the 
library and the complexity of its contents. In the 
other processes of administering the books added to 
the collection a knowledge of cataloging is equally 
important. But it is in reference work particularly 
that a thorough knowledge of cataloging counts. I 
can not state too strongly the need for reference 
workers who are trained catalogers. When I hear 
any one in my force begin to say “they do so and so” 
in speaking of the catalog and its makers, I despair of 
him. Unless his thought (and his word) is “the rule 
is so and so,” he has not the root of the matter in him. 
Up to a certain point one may do fairly good refer¬ 
ence work without resorting to the catalog, but that 
point is reached very quickly in a modern library. 
Perhaps you do not realize the difficulty of ascertain¬ 
ing that a book wanted is, or is not, in your library. 
It may seem an easy matter enough, requiring only a 
glance at a few cards. But even in a small library this 
is not always certain, and in a moderately large one it 
is always dangerous to say that a book asked for is 


138 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


not owned by the institution. The longer I work, 
the more do I respect the rule (which we rigidly 
enforce in the Library of Congress Reading Room 2 ) 
against giving a negative answer as to our possession 
of a certain book. There are so many possibilities 
which lurk concealed in the form of the question, the 
intricacies of the catalog, the lack of knowledge of the 
searcher! It is but seldom that you have all the 
elements in the problem within your control when you 
begin your search. If you find the book, well and 
good. But if you don’t, the problem bristles with 
queries. Is the name of the author correctly spelled? 
Is he really the author? Is the title right? Is it 
possible that the book is part of a set not yet analyzed 
in the catalog? Has a magazine article been asked 
for under the impression that it is a book? Can you 
find a correct description of the book (to settle a few 
of these doubts) in some other catalog or index? 
Is it a book too new to have been received and cata¬ 
loged? These are but a few of the questions you must 
ask yourself before you dare say “No, it isn't here .” 
A reference assistant who doesn’t know how to use his 
own and other catalogs is practically worthless. 

But I do not ask you to accept this opinion without 
proof. Take a couple of representative inquiries 

2 When this address was delivered the author was Superintendent 
of the Reading Room in the Library of Congress, and drew freely on 
his experience in illustration of the arguments advanced. 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


139 


received within a few weeks as illustrative of thou¬ 
sands. An historian working on early California 
history came to me recently, lamenting that we did 
not have a copy of a book frequently cited in works 
he was using as Viage de Sutil y Mexicana en el ano 
de 1792. Madrid , 1802. No entry was found under 
Sutil or Mexicana in our catalogs, old or new. “But,” 
said I to myself, “Mexicana is feminine. It prob¬ 
ably can’t be even a compound Spanish name of a 
person. Must be a ship since this is a voyage. Let’s 
look at the British Museum Catalog, which has a 
comfortable fashion of neglecting no proper names 
found on title pages. Sure enough! Here it is: 
Mexicana (Ship) see Relacion del viage de Sutil y 
Mexicana , etc. C. Valdes is given in brackets after 
the “Mexicana,” perhaps her commander, perhaps 
the author. Let’s look at Valdes in our cards. 
Here it is: “Valdes, Flores Bazan y Peon, Cayetano. 
.... See Espinosa y Tello, Jose. Relacion de 
Viage de Sutil , etc. Two copies!” Now I call your 
attention to two facts. First, that the Library of 
Congress catalog had a title entry for “Relacion de 
viage” and had the title been quoted accurately 
the book would have been found at once. Second, in 
the fear of too many entries, of making the catalog 
too complicated, the cataloger had violated one of 
the plainest rules and there had not been made added 
entries for the names of the ships. There were five 


140 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


added entries without them. The result of knowing 
the habits of the British Museum Catalog was that 
the book was found in ten minutes from the time the 
inquiry was made. 

Take another case: A Senator telephoned over 
that he wanted the report made by Justice Hughes on 
the Railway Mail Service; he didn’t know when or 
where, but it was since he became a Justice of the 
Supreme Court. This proved a poser. Of course 
there was no entry under Hughes, nor did Who's Who 
mention in its modest account this particular service. 
It merely gave a terminus a quo , for it said he was 
appointed to the Supreme Count in 1910. Clearly 
here was a report concealed somewhere in a govern¬ 
ment document, so the Document Catalog and Sup¬ 
plements were put into requisition. No results; 
nothing under Hughes, or Railway Mail Service. 
But a hazy recollection that there had been a Con¬ 
gressional row over second class mail matter led me 
to look at that subject. Still no help, but a little 
“See also” reference to “Postal Commission” at the 
end sent me to our cards under United States. Postal 
Commission. Here I found cards for the old com¬ 
mission of the nineties, and at the very end, an added 
entry referring to a message from the President to 
Congress, transmitting a Report of the Postmaster 
General which, when sent for, proved to contain the 
Report of the Commission on Second Class Mail 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


141 


Matter, headed by Mr. Justice Hughes. This took 
half an hour. And without a knowledge of cata¬ 
loging rules (particularly those of the Documents 
Office) it never would have been found—unless we 
had telephoned over to Justice Hughes’ Office and 
asked about it—and you couldn’t do that when he 
was on the bench listening to argument and the 
Senator wanting his document at once. 

It is clear enough, then, that reference librarians 
must know well cataloging principles and practice. 
But so must all workers who have to do with library 
records. Consider the problems presented by the 
need of keeping track of books scattered in the 
branches of a modern public library. What a com¬ 
plicated thing is a modern “union shelf list,” a “com¬ 
bined catalog!” And how near we are to the day of 
union catalogs or “repertories” designed to show the 
resources of cities, or regions, perhaps of the entire 
country! Can you imagine anyone unversed in 
practical cataloging undertaking to supervise such 
records? I venture to predict that inside of ten years 
we shall have in Washington a card record of practi¬ 
cally all the important books in that city. Chicago, 
Boston, Philadelphia, and the State of Indiana have 
produced printed lists of serial publications on file in 
their libraries. Union lists of all books in sharply 
defined fields (as books in Chinese) are even noi^ 
projected—perhaps almost completed. The future 


142 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


is a day of cooperation, and cooperation in most cases 
on the common basis of one set of cataloging rules 
governing a supply of contributed entries. You will 
begin to see something of the value of those rules, of 
your practical work at cataloging. It is not drudgery. 

It is not wasted effort. In studying cataloging you 
have been learning the grammar of your calling, the 
tools of your trade, which will be taken for granted in 
the conduct of large enterprises, in the planning of 
successful librarianship. 

If, then, a knowledge of cataloging is a very prac-/| 
tical necessity for a trained librarian—through by i 
no means his sole necessary equipment, I hasten to 
add, lest we fall into exaggeration—it would seem to 
follow naturally that the courses in that subject in 
library schools should prove one of the most profitable 
and practical parts of the curriculum. Far be it 
from me to criticize the manner in which instruction 
in cataloging is presented! But I have a feeling that 
the method of approach on the part of both instruc¬ 
tors and pupils has in many cases left something to 
be desired. The reader’s point of view and the ad¬ 
ministrative point of view have been, I venture to say, 
rather frequently and unfortunately neglected in the 
instruction. Here are codes of rules to be taught, 
here are certain practices, certain devices to be 
inculcated. The time is short and the devious ways 
of markers of books are legion. The minutiae and 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


143 


the mechanics of cataloging (which must be acquired!) 
naturally loom large in the eyes of the teacher. 
And on the other hand the pupil is rather apt to be 
impatient of so much detail, so many rules, so many 
exceptions, so much that is plainly drudgery. But 
if both keep in mind the reader and his needs, the task 
imposed by the very mass and variety of the books to 
be listed in due and orderly fashion; if the very human 
inquiries of the one, and the imperative demands made 
by the budget on the other, are never lost sight of, 
the study of cataloging will, I fancy, take on a fresh 
and perennial interest. 

Again, I think I am safe in saying that most stu¬ 
dents in library schools would rather do anything else 
than take up cataloging on graduation. They are 
all for administration, for reference work, for the 
charge of branches or of departments. This is perfectly 
natural. But not all desires of the natural man, if 
we may trust St. Paul, are both wise and good. If 
I were planning for the best sort of experience as a 
training for later work, I would urge most library 
school students on graduation to spend a couple of 
years in the cataloging department of some good- 
sized library. I do not know anything more valuable 
in the way of training in accuracy , in observation, in 
judgment, and in general library skill than such prac¬ 
tical work in cataloging. In my own work I should 
prefer graduates with such experience even to persons 



144 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


of the same equipment who had had a couple of years 
practice in reference work. And I am sure that as a 
foundation for later service in charge of a library the 
practical benefit would be very great. Persons who 
have been thrust into the control of libraries can sel¬ 
dom comprehend the real difficulties and needs of 
the work. They are either disposed to cut expenses 
to the great detriment of the service, or helplessly to 
allow the technical processes to remain a mystery 
not to be too closely looked into. But the librarian 
who has served his time at classifying, cataloging, or 
ordering books is never helpless or mystified in the 
face of library technique. Nor is he ignorant of its 
real needs and its true value. 

May I be permitted a word of personal reminis¬ 
cence? I was pitched into library work twenty 
years ago almost without warning, and wholly with¬ 
out technical library training, although I fancy I had 
fortunately seen more of the inside of libraries than 
most youngsters of twenty-four. I had entertained 
large bibliographical plans at the university, and in 
company with another enthusiast had combed the 
“Berichte” of the Berlin and Vienna Academies of 
Sciences for all articles on classical philology. We 
left the cards for these articles as a pious legacy to 
the Classical Seminar at Michigan. (I wonder what 
became of them?) Now my first task as a librarian 
was to catalog the whole of Von Gebhardt und Har- 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


145 


nack’s Texte und Untersuchungen; and precious little 
guidance for that job did I then find in Cutter’s 
Rules, my sole aid. But I found out all about con¬ 
tents, series, monographs, translators, editors, com¬ 
mentators, and subject cards for the lot. I had to. 
It was a case of sink or swim. I don’t know what 
sort of entries I produced, but I do know that the 
professors had no difficulty in finding those books. 
And nothing in the way of cataloging has ever seemed 
an impossible task to me since. Perhaps I am led to 
over-estimate the value of cataloging experience 
because I have had so much of it from the very begin¬ 
ning of my work as a librarian. But I covet that 
experience for others. 

Moreover, there are certain indirect results of the 
study and practice of cataloging which I must at least 
name. The extremely difficult task of correctly 
describing a book or a document becomes from repe¬ 
tition and criticism practically a habit. The work 
breeds a truly accurate habit of mind, at least so far 
as the observation and noting of certain externals go. 
Likewise, a cataloger is not ordinarily at a loss in an 
effort to locate a book, or to identify a citation. This 
ability is worth much. Scores of abbreviated book 
titles come to us every day, and it is persons with a 
good knowledge of cataloging who most readily 
interpret them. Every librarian has to use the tools 
of his trade, and they are every day getting more com- 


146 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


plicated. Bibliographies of all sorts are more easily 
used by one who has had cataloging training than by 
others, particularly card bibliographies. The day is 
coming when most library records will be on cards, 
and when one set of rules for entry (the cataloging 
rules) will govern most of these records. Finally, let 
no one underrate the value of the cataloger’s acquaint¬ 
ance with reference books. Not only does he per¬ 
force learn to use them—he learns to sit in judgment 
on them, to adopt a critical and discriminating atti¬ 
tude toward them and their makers, for he uses them 
for his own needs, not (as does the reference worker) 
for the needs of others. These indirect benefits of 
cataloging practice are worth perhaps as much or 
more than the obvious training in one line of work. 

There is a certain pathetic element of transitoriness 
and instability about the librarian’s calling. His 
work is for the day, the hour. No visible monument 
is ordinarily erected by his labors. Readers come and 
go, are served and aided, and others surge forward 
the next day. Books are bought, arranged and 
marshalled for the needs of one generation, and the 
next rearranges them to meet its own wants. There 
is no element of permanence in a classification system, 
for instance. In the very nature of things there can 
not be, for a grouping of books which suits one time 
and place can not suffice for another set of readers and 
another view of life. But the accurate and faithful 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


147 


description of a book according to a known code does 
abide. Didbin’s entries are as good for purposes of 
identification as Proctor’s or Pellechet’s. The item 
in the Boston Athenaeum Catalog is as useful as that 
in the A. L. A. Book List or on the Library of Con¬ 
gress Card. The cards written here in Albany and 
put in the catalog have a permanent value. Even 
if they are replaced by a printed entry, it is the same 
entry, perhaps in a trifle fuller form. In cataloging, 
then, there is an element of stability and permanence 
which carries a certain inner satisfaction that is very 
real. Non omnis moriar can be said of each cataloger’s 
work. That at least is an asset in a world of change. 

And what of the future? Are we to have practically 
the same sort of catalogs as in the past? Are there 
no signs of change? He would be a rash man who 
would predict, and I am neither a prophet nor the 
son of a prophet. But some things are very plain 
even to a reference librarian who is not a cataloger. 
We have just begun, in America, an era of huge libra¬ 
ries. The average size is increasing very fast. Our 
large libraries are getting very large. They are being 
run for wide constituencies on broad lines. More and 
more the practical American spirit is seeking for co¬ 
ordination and cooperation. It is by no means cer¬ 
tain that the card form of catalog will continue 
indefinitely as the chief tool of library workers. It is 
highly probable that selected catalogs will take the 


148 


CATALOGING AS AN ASSET 


place of huge general repertories for most purposes. 
Dimly one can see possibilities of mechanical changes 
and alterations, of the use of photography, instead of 
printer’s ink, possibilities of compression or even total 
change of form. Certainly our present card catalogs 
will require intelligent direction of the highest order 
to make them respond to the demands of readers, to 
the needs of the community. Changes such as these 
will require an intelligent and sympathetic oversight 
to insure their success. The librarians who will carry 
them out, who will guide and mold the development of 
cataloging, must perforce have been experienced and 
trained catalogers. 

And here we come back to our beginning, to your 
aim as students of library science. If you are to ad¬ 
minister libraries, you must know libraries, you must 
be able to work your machine, you must have practi¬ 
cal knowledge of its parts. Nothing in the craft should 
be foreign to you, least of all the art of cataloging. 


THE THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 1 


One of the commonest phenomena in the growth 
of a language is the unconscious development of 
technical phrases. Words which have a plain and 
ordinary meaning, universally understood and used, 
are given a special turn or a peculiar import in some 
locality or in some occupation. In a highly developed 
form of civilization in which communication is rapid 
and intercourse constant such special and peculiar 
meanings spread quickly and become current before 
people are aware either of the fact or the process. 
Every calling and profession has its own jargon, per¬ 
fectly intelligible to the initiate, though but half under¬ 
stood by the rest of the world. And in a singularly 
democratic country, one in which governmental 
decrees fixing nomenclature are practically unknown 
(for the reason that the central government has no 
concern with local matters ) the jargon of a trade or a 
profession may become fixed without any particular 
attention from anyone. Coined words, as the verbs 
“to accession,” “to shelf-list,” are in all conscience 
bad enough, but chief of the startling and novel crop 

1 Bulletin of the American Library Association , 1915, v. 9, p. 
134r— 139, Proceedings of the Berkeley Conference. 


149 


150 


THEORY OE REFERENCE WORK 


of new phrases in our calling is the term “reference 
librarian.” 

To the curious I commend the task of tracing in the 
library press and in library reports the history of this 
designation. It would make a good subject for a 
seminar paper. But whatever its history, the term 
has arrived. It meets me in half a dozen letters a day. 
I find persons signing themselves “reference librarian” 
writing from colleges and universities, from public 
libraries, from endowed research libraries, from state 
and governmental libraries. These libraries are 
large and small, general and special, but they all have 
a person styled a “reference librarian,” and in their 
reports we will find paragraphs on “reference” work, 
“reference” books, “reference” rooms, and so on. 
But a study of the functions performed by these 
persons and in these departments leave me with the 
impression that the terms are used rather loosely, 
that the duties performed by “reference workers” 
are by no means the same in all libraries. Observa- 
tion also leads me to believe that the term covers 
functions ranging from the practical control of all the 
relations with the public (in certain non-circulating 
libraries) down to the mere task of keeping order in a 
college study room. Before beginning any discus¬ 
sion of reference work, then, there is need, even among 
librarians, for a certain amount of definition. 

Reference work, as defined in this paper, is the 


THEORY OE REFERENCE WORK 


151 


service rendered by a librarian in aid of some sort of ^ 
study. It is not the study itself—that is done by the 
reader. Reference work is ordinarily distinguished 
from circulation work in libraries, although reference 
work may, and often does, lead to the sort of circula¬ 
tion librarians profess an ardent desire to further. 
The help given to a reader engaged in research of any ^ 
sort is what we mean by reference work. It may be 
aid of the most trivial sort, as in the finding of a name 
in a city directory, or of the most elaborate character, 
as the preparation of extensive lists of references such 
as those printed by the Division of Bibiliography in 
the Library of Congress, or by the New York Public 
Library. But it is primarily help given to a reader, 
not performance of the reader’s task. Reference 
work, then, is in aid of research, but it is not research 
itself. 

“Reference” librarians, it should follow, are em- 
ployees assigned to the task of assisting readers in the 
prosecution of their studies. They are the interpret 
ters of the library to the public. The books are here 
on the shelves; the machinery of library operation 
(catalogs, files, and what not) is ready: here are 
readers, each with his own need. But without some 
one to help a little, to explain, to suggest, to direct, 
the right book, the right article does not always fall 
into the reader’s hands. The expert and the tyro 
alike bring their difficulties to the man who can help 


152 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


them with his knowledge —not of the topic, but of the 
machinery. He does not, he can not, be an expert 
in many and various fields. But he does know books 
and library methods. He can refer people to the 
right place in the catalog, the proper section of the 
shelves; he is able to solve baffling puzzles in the way 
of abbreviated or incomplete titles, and he knows 
more than a little of what books his library owns. He 
is the interpreter of the library to readers, revealing 
not that which he himself has created, but that which 
has been gathered, arranged, listed, labeled, and 
shelved against their needs. The reference librarian 
has always existed. It is only of recent years that 
division of labor has given him a name—without his 
knowledge or consent, as for the most part names are 
wont to be bestowed. 

“Reference books,” too, have taken on a new and 
dubious meaning. Formerly the term was restricted 
to works of an encyclopaedic character, to books of 
ready reference. Dictionaries, almanacs, catalogs, 
cyclopaedias, compendia, were reference books. Now 
(in libraries) to these have been added other books 
placed in reading rooms with the view of keep¬ 
ing them there for the convenience of readers. Refer¬ 
ence books we generally hold to mean books in the 
reference rooms, or reading rooms, which are not 
ordinarily subject to circulation. Other books to 
which the old definition applies and which may not 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


153 


be in the reference rooms still receive the old designa¬ 
tion. Bayle’s Dictionary, for example, would doubt¬ 
less be considered a reference book even by the ruth¬ 
less modernist who consigns it to the stack and 
never revels in the spicy anecdotes, the keen thrusts 
of its heretical author. I find also (not among 
librarians) a disposition to term “reference” books 
any books to which reference is made in syllabi and 
reading lists. Time and again I have seen letters 
asking about “reference” books, which proved to be 
very ordinary and commonplace text-books, or mono¬ 
graphs. To librarians, however, the term doubtless 
conveys its old meaning of compends for quick 
consultation and has come to include also such other 
books as experience has placed at the convenience of 
reference workers and readers in reading rooms. 

The modern extension of this word reference is 
further seen in the phrases “reference rooms” and 
“reference library.” These are set over against 
circulation departments and lending libraries. As a 
rule, it is the smaller libraries which use the term 
“reference room,” or “reference department.” The 
larger libraries, which subdivide their work in aid of 
readers, are more likely to use the term “reading 
rooms,” particularly as they probably have half a 
dozen departments for specialized aid of research. 
A technical reading and study room, for instance, is 
not ordinarily referred to as a “reference room,” but 


154 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


“department of technology.’’ “Reference libraries” 
are a group apart. Their function is primarily the 
aid of specialized, of advanced research. Considering 
the great number of libraries and the money spent 
on them in America, the group is a very small one as 
yet, but as notable as it is small. There is moreover, 
small question as to the meaning of the word when 
applied to them. Reference in their case spells 
research. 

Whether or no these definitions find common accept¬ 
ance, there can be no question as to one fact which 
confronts anyone planning reference work for any 
particular library. Most of our libraries are open 
twelve to fourteen hours daily, and for a shorter 
period on Sunday. The average library employee 
is not present more than eight hours a day. Obvi¬ 
ously this means, save in very small libraries, a cer¬ 
tain duplication of force and division of labor in the 
reference work. This at once implies a certain 
amount of organization and planning in its conduct. 
The mere assignment of a probably suitable person 
to the reference desk is of course not enough. There 
must be some continuity in the work, some assurance 
that the man coming at night will get as good service 
as the man who came in the morning. In other words 
reference work demands a policy on the part of the 
librarian, a definite plan as to what is expected from 
it, and the means to be applied toward it. Even if 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


155 


it has grown up of itself after its own fashion, the 
very success it has achieved requires a careful analysis 
and a plan for continuation. We have given great 
attention to buying books, to cataloging and classify¬ 
ing them, to building up circulation, to bringing the 
books home to the people, to providing buildings. 
The reference work demands the same sort of care and 
thought. 

Another very obvious fact is that no one person 
can possibly have special knowledge of the wide 
variety of subjects on which libraries have books. 
It is almost inevitable that, even in a library of moder¬ 
ate size, some one else than the reference librarian may 
be the best person to assist a particular inquirer. In 
a large library in which specialists are necessarily 
gathered, it is highly probable that the special depart¬ 
ment or the specialist in some department, rather than 
the reference librarian should attend to his need. 
The reader “is entitled to the best aid in the library’s 
staff.” Thus on any theory of reference work, the 
reference librarian is bound by a self-denying ordi¬ 
nance. Not his service merely, but the best service, he 
is to put at the reader’s disposal. He is to be a 
guide not alone to the books, but to the library’s 
resources in personnel. This principle also pre-sup- 
poses a policy on the part of the library as a whole 
toward the reference work. 

That policy will differ according to the nature of 


156 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


the demands made upon the library and the extent of 
its resources. There are, speaking very broadly, 
three sorts of demands in ordinary reference work, 
the inquiry for historico-literary information of every 
sort, the inquiry about present-day conditions in 
social and economic fields, and the inquiry in special 
fields of knowledge, such as technical chemistry or 
electricity, or law. The historic (or antiquarian) 
demand is the most familiar and probably the most 
frequent in large libraries; the social (contemporary) 
demand is the most insistent and difficult to satisfy; 
the technical demand (when serious) is usually made 
in a technical library, or by a person already trained 
who is capable of handling for himself the technical 
books. Now the general library is usually either 
strong in history, literature and the arts, or strong 
in statistics, documents, and sociology. It is seldom 
so evenly developed (for whatever reason—many will 
occur to you at once) in all fields that none has a 
preponderance. The equipment and training of the 
reference workers should, it would seem, reflect the 
strongest side of the library’s collections, at least up 
to the point where those collections require the serv¬ 
ices of specialists. For example, suppose a library 
has a good collection of music which is growing rapidly 
as a result of an endowment. Ultimately it will need 
a specialist in musical literature in charge of the col¬ 
lection. Until the time comes for him, however, it 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


157 


would be folly not to have some one on the reference 
staff—or at least available for reference work—who 
knows more than a little of music and its literature. 

But if the reference librarian is not to absorb 
inquiries at the reference desk, if he is properly to 
consider himself an introducer of readers to the person 
best able to assist them, he is also required by this 
very obligation to sift inquiries, to discover those, 
for instance, which can be answered by means of the 
World Almanac, or Who’s Who, and to prevent them 
going past him to bother and annoy busy folk. We 
have at the Library of Congress a department of 
Semitics. But we have learned in the Reading Room 
to spot the young Egyptians and Syrians who wish 
to read the files of our one Arabic illustrated magazine, 
and not to let them get past the Reading Room desk 
to the Semitic Department. If the question can be 
handled with reasonable ease and celerity by the 
reference force, it should remain with them. Tact, 
the ability to single out the actual thing wanted 
in the haze of the first questions, a good memory, 
knowledge of catalogs and of classifications, are the 
prime requisites in a “reference” librarian. Added 
to them must be—as indicated above—an acquaint¬ 
ance with some field in which the library is particularly 
strong, and in which there is a persistent demand. 
Experience, too, counts for more in reference work 
than almost any other factor, particularly experience 


158 


THEORY OE REFERENCE WORK 


in the library in which the work is done. Time and 
again I have seen reference workers made wise by 
long years of training handle with consummate ease 
and success an inquiry which had baffled inexperi¬ 
enced folk of excellent, even superior, training. The 
acquaintance with the library’s resources which comes 
from living in it, the knowledge of how similar ques¬ 
tions were met before, the curious ability to sense the 
real point at issue, are assets which come with time 
alone. 

We shall not attempt in this paper to take up the 
practical matters of how such reference librarians shall 
perform their manifold and varied duties. The topic 
is the theory of reference work, which involves of 
course the attitude of the library toward it, and the 
qualifications of those engaged in it, as well as the 
preliminary discussion of its nature. But the tools 
of the reference worker and his quarters we may 
properly include within the theory of his work. 
Whether the force be large or small, whether the work 
be general or special, the reference librarian must 
have some special place to work in and some things to 
work with. (I have seen both fundamentals totally 
ignored.) 

To begin with his tools. In a general sense the 
entire reference collection is for his use in aiding 
readers, but it is the books and apparatus which he 
uses personally with great frequency that more 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


159 


immediately concern us. These should be near at 
hand where they can be reached with little motion. 
No matter w T hat his particular line of work there are 
sure to develop lists and bibliographies, memoranda 
and notes. Some sort of record is naturally kept of 
particularly difficult and puzzling inquiries. He will 
need a vertical file for all these, and if the demand 
for ephemeral publications on questions of the hour 
and the place is strong, his vertical file is likely to 
grow to large dimensions. He will need as many 
works of quick reference as he can get about him, 
dictionaries, indexes, compends of statistics, recent 
bibliographies, directories and so on. These are his 
first aids, his emergency tools. 

His next line of help is not so often the general col¬ 
lection of reference books as it is the catalog of the 
library. If that instrument is at all well made, it is 
the natural resort of the reference librarian in almost 
all his emergencies. He probably will know it more 
thoroughly than anyone except the filers. It would 
seem almost a necessity that he should not be placed 
far from it, and yet we have all seen reference rooms 
remote from the public catalog, even on separate 
floors. 

Then come the reference books in the reference 
room, open to readers freely, and distinctly for their 
use but in a peculiar sense also the tools of the refer¬ 
ence librarian. Reference collections should be made 


160 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


with local ends in view. While one may with safety 
and wisdom foresee a demand and provide reference 
books for it, the bulk of the reference books should 
be such as experience shows to be needed in that 
particular place. Because a book is very useful in 
some large library, it is by no means certain that it 
will prove an equally valuable reference aid in a small 
town library or in a special library. Reference col¬ 
lections, moreover, should contain a certain number of 
duplicates. Experience will show what they shall 
be. My plea is that the reference collection should 
be made up strictly in accordance with local needs, 
guided by the reference librarian’s observations and 
his knowledge of the demand. It goes without saying 
that it will require constant and drastic revision. 

Such are the tools of the trade. How should they 
be housed? No details can be given, but certain 
principles may be at least mentioned. The reference 
room must be near the public catalog; it must not be 
remote from the book stacks. There should be (even 
in small libraries) some provision for privacy of 
consultation when necessary. It is extremely diffi¬ 
cult to have no place to take an embarrassed inquirer, 
no place to consult on what may be very important 
matters other than the open reference room. Some 
study rooms where groups can work adjacent to the 
main reference room seem also a necessity. De¬ 
baters and clubs we are likely to have with us for 


THEORY OE REFERENCE WORK 


161 


some time to come. Further details are matters of 
the individual building. 

Assuming, then, that we are agreed that reference v-/ 
work is organized effort on the part of libraries in aid 
of the most expeditious and fruitful use of their books, 
under comfortable housing conditions, we may safely 
inquire whether its possibilities have been explored, 
its limits reached. Have we yet done all that can be 
done properly to exploit the books in our libraries, to 
develop their use to the utmost? Is it not true that 
we are but beginning to see the possibilities of useful 
service which can be rendered to the community, 
not alone by the existence of rich collections, of care¬ 
fully selected libraries, but by the trained and organ¬ 
ized force which interprets them? Is it not impera¬ 
tive that we abandon (if we have ever held) the pas¬ 
sive attitude, politely responsive to demands, but 
creating none? Consider for a moment the attitude 
of the so-called “special” library toward its clients. 
Because of their high intelligence in some special 
field, of their keen interest in the literature of their 
calling, the clients of such a library demand and 
secure highgrade service within that field, a service 
which generally sets itself no limits of time or effort 
on behalf of its readers. Zeal in such a library does 
not degenerate into officiousness, nor does proper 
reserve become indifference. The librarians of a 
scientific laboratory, of an insurance company, of a 


162 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


research institute know their limited clientele, antici¬ 
pate their wants, respond to their calls, serve intelli¬ 
gently, and therefore successfully. 

Even so, general libraries may perhaps establish a 
relation of intimacy with at least certain sections or 
classes of their larger community. By a study of its 
component parts, of its social orgnization there have 
already been found in many cities possibilities of help¬ 
ful aid to many classes of readers who ordinarily come 
but seldom to any library. Such a study of a town or 
city one supposes every librarian makes in a general 
way. But the reference workers in large and small 
public libraries are under special obligation to con¬ 
sider not only those daily demands which custom and 
training bring to their desks, but all those latent 
chances of usefulness which lie too frequently un¬ 
dreamt of about them. Why buy certain classes of 
books? Why keep other classes? Who can use this 
sort, and who that? Why not develop a certain sub¬ 
ject for a certain need, even if it be hitherto unvoiced? 
Why not spend on the study of the possible and actual 
use of books some of the energy shown in selecting 
fiction and reading reviews? In other words, why 
not exploit intelligently and successfully the non- 
recreative side of library work, building up stores of 
books against a future need, gathering ephemeral 
material for the day? 

The possibilities of reference work in reference 


THEORY OE REFERENCE WORK 


163 


libraries are, I believe, but dimly seen as yet. Judg¬ 
ing from our foremost examples, one might say that 
the keynote is specialization, either by way of de¬ 
partments within a general library, as the New York 
Public Library, or by limiting the field of the library 
itself, as in the John Crerar Library, or the John Carter 
Brown Library. But specialization means planning 
for the student, the investigator, fully as much as for 
the librarian assigned to the care of a department. 
It means a policy of acquisition in special fields, a 
development of a special clientele, a specialized 
service which can create a demand as well as supply 
one. The mere library specialist, who sits in a room 
and gathers books about him, performs a service of a 
certain sort, it is true. But the specialist in American 
history, in prints, in maps, in music, in physics, in law, 
in statistics, who keeps in touch with the men of his 
sort throughout the world, who knows them, knows 
what is going on, contributes his mite, brings them 
eagerly about him, fills a vastly more important post. 
We have men of this sort, and we shall have more of 
them as our libraries grow. They are alive. They 
are the true reference workers, whatever their official 
nomenclature. 

And the general “reference librarian,” the man who 
is compelled to be all things to all men, who, count¬ 
ing nothing and no one trivial, spends his days open¬ 
ing up to the miscellaneous public the stores of the 


164 


THEORY OF REFERENCE WORK 


library’s books, what of him? He sends the inter¬ 
esting inquiry on to the specialist; he passes on the 
interesting man to another head of department; he 
greets generations of students in high schools, col¬ 
leges, normal schools, technical schools; he helps out 
the hurried newspaper man hunting desperately for a 
portrait or a biography of some one sprung into fame 
between editions; he sets the aspiring Daughter of 
the American Revolution on the track of a new bar; 
here he averts a difficulty, there he smooths down an 
irate reader with too often a just grievance; he is an^' 
interpreter, revealing to inquirers what the library 
has; he is a lubricant, making the wheels run noise¬ 
lessly and well. Little glory and less reputation 
accrue to him. He counts his days’ work done well, 
but sees no tally of so many thousand books bought or 
other thousands cataloged. At his best scholars use ^ 
him, like him, thank him. At his lowest ebb no 
one considers him save as a useful part of the machin¬ 
ery. This is the theory of his work—service, quiet, " 
self-effacing, but not passive or unheeding. To make 
books useful, and more used,—this is his aim. This 
aim and this theory are alike honored in any gathering 
of librarians. 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 1 


This is the commencement season. Up and down 
the land in the past three weeks thousands of young 
people have assembled for their final exercises in 
school and college and university. Hundreds of com¬ 
mencement orations, perfervid or quiet, hortatory 
or reflective, have been addressed to fond parents 
and their graduating offspring, while teachers and 
professors have listened with a touch of wearied 
reminiscence to well-worn truth, to lofty aspiration, 
to solemn admonition. Diverse as these addresses 
have been, different in quality, in manner and in 
topic, it is probably safe to say that one reflection, 
one phrase has been absent from no one of them. 
Whatever his theme, whatever his purpose, it is a 
poor commencement orator who does not at some 
moment of his discourse address the graduates as 
“the future leaders of the community.” Nay more, 
it is on this postulate of future leadership that most 
of the solemn warning of responsibility and the 
ardent exhortation to serious use of training and of 
the fruits of study is grounded. To the coming leaders 
of thought, of action does the commencement orator 

1 Read at Asbury Park Conference of the American Library Asso¬ 
ciation. Bulletin of the American Library Association, July, 1916. 

165 


166 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


appeal. Not to those who will prove average Ameri¬ 
can citizens or commonplace voters and toilers are 
his eloquent periods addressed. They are, so genera¬ 
tions have been told, the choice spirits who shall 
lead the hosts, shall guide the republic, shall mold the 
destinies of nations yet unborn. 

With what sardonic inward grins and grimaces 
do old and worldly-wise teachers listen to these 
familiar phrases! And in how many audiences have 
the real powers that be, snatching a hasty hour from 
business in deference to paternal interest or maternal 
pride, instinctively muttered derisive comment on the 
foolishness of the wise men. For both sorts—the 
veteran teacher and the real leader of men—diverse 
as are their aims and their outlook on life—know by 
bitter experience that while many are called, few are 
chosen. A generation hence it may well be true—and 
probably will be—that our leaders are mainly school 
and college bred. It is not so now, nor has it ever 
been so in the history of this republic. While our 
universities count their presidents and their distin¬ 
guished senators and representatives by scores, there 
have been hundreds of equal power and weight who 
have known no academic halls or scholastic training— 
to say nothing of the men in the background who 
made them all presidents and senators and repre¬ 
sentatives. While our technical schools have turned 
out great engineers, railroad builders, masters of in- 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


167 


dustry, it is not from them that Harriman, Westing- 
house, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Edison graduated, 
but from the hard school of business and industry. 
What man who will run over the list of those who 
have truly led thought and action in our country from 
its beginnings on this shore to its achievements on the 
Pacific can affirm that scholastic training produced 
all these leaders? Some of them it did produce,— 
and we may thank God for them,—Jefferson, Hamil¬ 
ton, the Adamses, Madison, Webster, Sumner, 
Roosevelt and Wilson. But no college counts among 
its alumni Washington, Marshall, Clay, Jackson and 
Lincoln. Least of all is it true that the majority of our 
school and college graduates become leaders of men. 

Why is this so? We are all agreed that the edu¬ 
cation received in college and professional school 
leaves on men and women a stamp of quality and 
fineness. We are convinced beyond possibility of 
doubt that without formal education the attainment 
of certain valued and almost vital attributes is 
generally so difficult as to be almost impossible. Even 
those very men who by reason of native force and 
ability, by sheer pluck and unending toil, have 
reached posts of leadership and large usefulness with¬ 
out formal education are as a rule most anxious that 
their sons and daughters shall have the very training 
they have lacked. None of us belittles or derides for¬ 
mal training; least of all the librarian of a university. 


168 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


But if there be this gap between expectation and 
result, if our colleges and schools do not train leaders 
as such, where are our leaders trained and what 
school produces them? We are, said Mr. Lowell, 
the “most common-schooled people on earth”— 
“and,” he added, “the least educated.” His obser¬ 
vation will not always be true, but there still remains 
ample justification for it. It is the school of experi¬ 
ence, the laboratory of business, the seminar of com¬ 
petition that produce the real leaders of opinion and 
of action. And in our universities it is probably 
contact with his fellows that brings into consciousness 
a man’s qualities of leadership rather than instruction 
in classes and lecture rooms. One of President 
Wilson’s keenest observations on university life was 
his dictum that fully as much education was going 
on between the hours of four in the afternoon and 
eight in the morning as between eight and four. It is 
a matter of common observation that the leaders of 
student opinon and action are but seldom those whose 
class standing is of the first rank. The intense special¬ 
ization of our day in all our universities doubtless 
contributes to this failure to develop qualities of 
leadership. Few undergraduates—or graduate stu¬ 
dents, for that matter,—combine high attainments 
in one field with comprehensive grasp of many fields, 
or unite scholarship with an ability to meet many 
men on terms of equality and intelligence. 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


169 


And yet no lasting and effective leadership is found 
which is not based on knowledge. A moment’s re¬ 
flection will convince anyone of this elemental truth. 
Take our own calling, for instance; this very A. L. A. 
of ours. We have had our leaders, and of most of 
them we have been proud—and justly. To mention 
only the dead—who will deny sound learning and 
high attainment to Cutter, Winsor, Poole, Thwaites, 
Larned, Spofford, Billings? Somehow these men, 
and others like them, combined a rare knowledge of 
their profession with an ability to use that knowledge 
effectively. They not only knew, but they knew how. 
So it is in almost any field. It is the man who knows 
and who knows how that stands at the top. Even 
in the realm of politics, that most hopeless of all 
callings from the scholar’s viewpoint, it is the man 
who knows the ins and outs of the game, who knows 
men, and knows how to work the machine, that com¬ 
mands followers and gets results. Leadership is 
a combination of certain personal qualities with 
sheer ability and knowledge even in politics. In every 
other walk of life it is even more conspicuously true 
that on knowledge and the ability to use it well and 
honorably are based distinction and honor and power. 

Political philosophers have always been doubtful 
about the matter of leadership in a democracy. More 
than ever today when the very foundations of the 
social structure seem rent and torn, when half the 


170 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


world is engaged in deadly strife, and when both the 
alarmist and the pacifist are dinning in our ears dis¬ 
cordant cries, are beards wagged and heads shaken 
over the sad state of this poor republic, bereft of sane 
leadership and dependent on the whim of erratic 
demos. We have, say these gloomy philosophers 
both old and new, no hereditary leaders to guide our 
thought and action, we have no rulers divinely ap¬ 
pointed. We have no ruling class. We have not even 
a leading class. We lack great families in whom is 
vested a tradition of leadership, whose many genera¬ 
tions have served the state honorably and well. We 
are left to ourselves, and not to folk like you and me, 
at least passably educated and with some power of 
reason, but to a host of unintelligent and ignorant 
citizens with the power of voting but with no other 
asset for governing. Only our geographical isolation 
has preserved us thus far from destruction. So runs 
the burden of these modern vates malorum , of late a 
numerous crew, lamenting our lack of an aristocracy, 
of hereditary leaders, of trained governors. 

In truth the situation is serious enough without 
the groans of the calamity howler. On all sides we 
see facing us new problems both internal and external. 
Our old world is making itself over very fast, and it is 
entirely likely that the next thirty years will not be a 
comfortable period for any people. In these United 
States the frontier period is pretty definitely closed, 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


171 


despite the fact that its needs and conditions are 
reflected in the great body of our public institutions 
and laws. It is perfectly patent—though not always 
perceived in Washington—that the old-fashioned 
political thinker and his machinery both mental and 
moral are out of date and doomed. The man who 
shouts for the Old Flag—and the post-offices—is not 
the sort that twentieth century constituencies are 
most keen to return to office. In fact, I think it may 
be said safely, it is exactly in times of emergency both 
social and political that the people instinctively turn 
for leadership to the men who both know and know 
how. Knowledge plus efficiency plus character be¬ 
comes vastly attractive in times of stress and strain. 
The leadership which a democracy will require—and 
will get—in such times as are ahead of us is no dema¬ 
goguery or chauvinism. These have their day—and 
unfortunately it is sometimes a long one. But with 
the need there arise the men to meet it, and they will 
be men of that sort of practical learning who can 
unite the best thought of the past with a keen per¬ 
ception of the needs of the present. They will be men 
of vision—but not visionaries, scholars—but not 
scholastics. The man who knows and who can apply 
his knowledge is the sort of leader American society 
needs at the present, and will need vastly more in the 
future. We need him in business, in the professions, in 
politics, in industry, in our military and our civil 


172 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


service. Sound learning and the ability to use it must 
perforce form the basis of leadership in the present 
temper of the world. It takes but a glance at the 
frightful struggle in Europe to see that the man who 
knows, who can use his knowledge and who can be 
trusted has come to the fore in the relentless sifting of 
war. Even so will our own problems—less dreadful, 
if not less pressing—demand and (I believe) secure a 
leadership based on the three fundamentals—learning, 
skill, character. 

Well, supposing that all this is true, what has it to 
do with libraries and librarians? Granted the thesis— 
and you do not all grant it, I am sure—what place 
has it on the program of the A. L. A.? The topic 
has, perhaps, at least one vital application to our own 
work. We cannot well forecast the future librarian of 
distinction along any other lines than those I have 
just indicated. Who of us will venture to deny that 
the successful leader among librarians must combine 
an intimate and minute knowledge of library proc¬ 
esses and details with an ability to put that knowl¬ 
edge to efficient practical use? As librarians we have 
a three-fold duty, to gather and conserve our material 
(books), to arrange it to serve the needs of our genera¬ 
tion (classification and catalog) and to exploit it to the 
best interest of the community (service). No one of 
these divisions of our calling can be conceived apart 
from learning, skill and character. And it is, primar- 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


173 


ily, his learning which gives distinction to a librarian’s 
other qualities. 

In fact, it is a fair question in the present state of the 
world’s knowledge whether it is possible to conceive 
any extensive and deep learning apart from books 
in libraries. So closely is the actual knowledge of the 
present woven with the record of each science and art, 
that it is impossible as a rule to say, “On this side 
of the line lies the past with its error and its truth, 
and on that the reality as men see it today.” In few, 
if any, lines of work is learning divorced from books. 
The physical and natural sciences, the applied sci¬ 
ences and technology seek in books the record of their 
progress. Without that record (largely in journals, 
to be sure) they must depend on memory and tradi¬ 
tion for a feeble and groping advance. It is almost 
impossible to conceive nowadays any branch of knowl¬ 
edge which is not based on the recorded progress of 
the past, whether that past be distant or very recent. 
No science, no discipline, no branch of learning under 
our modern conditions flourishes for long aside and 
apart from its record in books. The laboratory and 
the factory demand the library as truly and per¬ 
sistently as does the historian’s study or the phil¬ 
osopher’s cabinet. The practical arts of life, the daily 
work of the world, are also—to a less extent indeed— 
dependent more and more in our complex social or¬ 
ganization on recorded knowledge. Preeminence in 


174 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


almost any field is more and more an ability to put 
book-learning to vital and practical use. To cite but 
one example from the hideous conflict in Europe; 
the change which has come over warfare because of 
the development of artillery. Can you conceive the 
makers of these dread modern engines of destruction 
creating them without a knowledge of mathematical 
ballistics, of metallurgical chemistry, of the proper¬ 
ties of high explosives, and a host of intensely tech¬ 
nical subjects? And where did they get this knowl¬ 
edge which has enabled ships to destroy other ships 
below the horizon line? From the record in books of 
each successive step in these various and manifold 
sciences. 

If, then, leadership is conditioned by knowledge, 
and knowledge largely by the variety, extent, and 
availability of books, we may well pause to reflect 
a while on the competence of American libraries as 
regards their books. Is our democracy furnished as it 
should be to aid the man who aspires to leadership 
through his knowledge? How far are our resources 
adequate to the demands now actually made on them, 
and likely soon to be made even more insistently? 
I shall not inquire as to our willingness to make our 
material available, our efficiency in arranging it, our 
power and desire to advertise. But have we the goods? 
Can American science, art, philosophy, criticism, his¬ 
tory, literature discover in any (or all) our libraries 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


175 


their needed and, indeed vital, food? Here is a ques¬ 
tion we may well ask ourselves in an honest spirit of 
searching inquiry. How well is your library equipped 
to serve the real leaders of your community? We are 
not to ask ourselves whether we do a good work, a 
useful work, but can we do a vital work for our day? 
Can we supply the man who knows with the means of 
broadening and deepening his knowledge? Do we own 
the books we should? 

In general, we do not. We have hosts of libraries 
throughout this land. We have many large libraries. 
We have a few huge libraries. But we do not yet have 
anything approaching in point of completeness the 
British Museum or the Bibliotheque Nationale. Dr. 
Richardson’s survey of our actual owning of scien¬ 
tific journals published at the Atlanta Conference in 
1899 would doubtless require great revision and re¬ 
statement if made at the present day. But even 
granted all the magnificient progress of these seven¬ 
teen years—for it has been magnificent—a survey of 
the same or related fields would show no startling 
gains over the situation in 1899. Only fair progress 
has been made in supplying our fundamental needs in 
the sciences, taking the country as a whole. We have 
some splendid examples of specialization—the 
Surgeon-General’s Library, the John Crerar Library, 
the John Carter Brown Library, the United Engineer¬ 
ing Societies Library in New York, the Wisconsin 


176 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


Historical Society’s Library, and others which will 
occur to you at once, particularly in highly technical 
fields such as law and chemistry. But not even the 
libraries maintained by the Federal Government have 
yet come within sight of the point of saturation (if I 
may be allowed the figure) in their respective lines. 
Our American scientists, technicians, historians, econ¬ 
omists, jurists, have not at their command, even with 
our present development of inter-library loans, such 
resources as are at the disposal of their British, French, 
German, and Austrian colleagues. We have a splen¬ 
did beginning, but it is only a beginning. We sorely 
need to study cooperative buying and cooperative use. 
We must work together and not at random or at 
cross-purposes if we are to put American libraries in 
a full state of preparedness to serve American leaders 
of thought and action. The very eminence achieved 
by the Library of Congress, the New York Public 
Library, the Harvard University Library, the Boston 
Public Library, and the Yale University Library (to 
mention only some of our millionaires) demands of 
them and of the rest of us that we all work together 
to the end that no real scholar be let and hindered in 
his work by the absence from these United States of 
the books his work demands. 

At this point I may perhaps enter a caveat. Let 
no one suppose that I for a moment ignore or under¬ 
rate the service of our libraries on other than the 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


177 


purely informational or scholastic side. This is not 
the place, nor am I, perhaps, the man, to pay just 
tribute to the devoted labors of those pioneers who 
have brought libraries into being throughout this land. 
We are not now discussing the value to our people of 
the stores of poetry, fiction, literature, and art which 
our libraries are supplying to an ever-widening 
clientele. The worth and value of recreative reading 
no one feels more keenly than I. Did our libraries 
serve no other purpose, they would still have an ample 
excuse for being in their function of providing good, 
wholesome, attractive, inspiring books for their com¬ 
munities. Incidentally it may be remarked that 
frequently the lack of such food for the soul in li¬ 
braries of the learned type is one of their greatest 
weaknesses. 

Are we competent on the side of service? In gen¬ 
eral we are. Nowhere in the world is the scholar less 
hampered by rule or petty regulation, less hindered 
by imperfect or wanting records, more helped by 
specially trained librarians. We have developed a 
professional spirit, and it is a spirit of service worthy 
of comparison with the best ideals of the medical or 
other learned professions. The note of service is in¬ 
sistent in all our gatherings, all our schools, all our 
libraries. Despite individual cases of grudging use of 
facilities, of poor catalogs or worse schemes of ar¬ 
rangement, despite all those deficiencies of buildings, 


178 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


staff, equipment which we know too well, it remains 
true that the American librarian has developed 
technical efficiency to a high degree, has shown a 
public spirit and a zeal in his work which have won 
hearty recognition from the community. I need not 
fear an accusation of self-praise when I affirm that on 
the side of service we are prepared to render real and 
vital aid to research and to learning. More than that, 
we are seeking to find out the actual needs of our com¬ 
munities and constituencies, to bring the library home 
to them, to render not only a willing and competent, 
but an intelligent and sympathetic service. 

But such generalizations as these seldom carry con¬ 
viction. They represent at best an opinion, and give 
but small measure of the grounds on which judgment 
has been reached, Consider, however, the actual facts 
revealed by a few experiences. Certain members of a 
committee appointed to survey the needs of the scien¬ 
tific and practical work of the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture declared to me a few months since that,—not¬ 
withstanding the existence of the spendid library 
facilities of Washington,—not the least of which is 
the Library of that Department,—notwithstanding 
all that well-known bibliographic work which has 
been so well done in the various bureaus of the De¬ 
partment,—the botanist, the zoologist, the expert in 
farm management and the agricultural chemist were 
manifestly and painfully worse off in the way of 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


179 


vitally necessary books than were their colleagues in 
England, France and Germany. The United States 
government, said these gentlemen, should spend a 
hundred thousand dollars a year for five years to give 
the scientists in applied botany and zoology the books 
they absolutely require in order to do satisfactory 
work for the American people. No one who knows 
the government service will accuse these men and 
others like them of being visionaries and dreamers. 
The man who was most emphatic in voicing the de¬ 
mand for more, and yet more, books has successfully 
introduced into America the cultivation of the date 
palm in the desert country of our Southwest, has 
brought the high-priced Egyptian cotton to successful 
commercial growth on the irrigated lands of Arizona 
with a yield which a few years since was five bales and 
last year was over a million, and has brought under 
contribution for the benefit of this country the native 
and cultivated fruits of regions as far asunder as 
China and the Sahara desert. When such men tell me 
they can’t do their work well because we do not have 
in this country—or librarians can not find for them— 
the books they want, I feel it is up to us to take 
notice. 

Most of you are familiar with the efforts made some 
years since by a committee of the American Historical 
Association to locate in our libraries copies of the 
fundamental collections of sources of European his- 


180 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


tory. Now it is probably true that the prosperity 
of the country and the quality of its leadership can 
hardly be shown to be dependent on at least a suffi¬ 
cient supply of these monumental works. But how 
shall we divorce institutions, politics, government 
from their origins and from the long story of their 
growth? Without these sources, how shall we train 
historians or aid them to develop? Are we not heirs of 
European life and culture? In this complex of nation¬ 
alities which we call the United States can we afford 
to be without the record of any and all European 
nationalities? No one library—save perhaps Harvard 
—if my memory does not fail me—was shown to have 
even a working majority of the sources of European 
history when this inquiry was begun. Surely the 
resultant purchases alone have justified Dr. Richard¬ 
son’s undertaking. 

Last winter at the Bibliographical Society’s meet¬ 
ing at Chicago a young American scholar read a most 
illuminating—almost an epoch-making—paper on the 
sources of Slavic bibliography. One by one he un¬ 
folded for us the checkered and painful record of 
bibliographic labor in Russia, Poland, Croatia, 
Bohemia, and so on. At the conclusion of the paper I 
turned to the librarian of one of our large universities 
with the query: “How many of those titles do you 
suppose you have in your library?” “Perhaps five 
per cent,” was the answer. At Michigan we proved 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


181 


not to have even that many, although our collection 
of bibliographies is by no means to be despised; in 
fact, we have been rather proud of it. Comment is 
unnecessary, when one considers that in Michigan 
we have at least two hundred and fifty thousand 
people of Slavic origin. 

Take the case of the chemical industries as another 
example. If there is any one branch of science pretty 
well covered by American libraries, chemical technol¬ 
ogy is probably that one. And yet an expert in but 
one branch of metallurgical chemistry, a scientist who 
was also an expert bibliographer, had to work in half a 
dozen different cities, resorting continually to inter- 
library loans, before he could secure for abstracting 
the greater portion of his references on vanadium 
alone. Even then he had in reserve enough references 
to justify a trip to Europe at the expense of his em¬ 
ployers. The great chemical industries of Detroit 
are writing to us almost weekly inquiring about 
journals of which we can get no track in our card and 
other bibliographies. The very fact that we can 
get them so much very properly renders them irritable 
when we have to tell them we don’t know where a set 
can be found. 

I might go on—and any other librarian here might 
do the same—showing field after field in which the 
existing and recorded literature of value is not well 
covered in our American libraries. In the very nature 


182 


LEADERSHIP THROUGH LEARNING 


of things it can not be otherwise at present. We are 
after all a very young people. Our libraries are not 
old—as men count age in Asia and Europe. What I 
have just said but lends emphasis and point to those 
oft repeated injunctions of previous conferences. We 
must cooperate in service to bring out the full power 
of what we have. We must cooperate in buying to 
make our money count for the most. We must help 
each other by every bibliographic device we can in¬ 
vent. We must organize for mutual service of our 
communities. If leadership through learning means 
anything, on us in large measure rests the burden of 
providing the means of learning. If the man who 
knows needs to increase his knowledge—as he always 
will—we must not fail him. We must have the books 
for him. How we shall bring him and the books 
together is another story. 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 1 * 2 3 

Every once in a while we hear some one—usually 
a very youthful person—making slighting remarks to 
the disparagement of the “old-fashioned librarian.” 
This phrase is generally coupled with some ungracious 
allusion to his supposed function as a “keeper” of 
books. It is not uncommonly, also, the introduction 
to certain highly laudatory reflections on the extent 
to which 11 nous avons change tout cela .” I often won¬ 
der whether these folk who so glibly relegate the old- 
fashioned librarian to the limbo of out-worn ideals 
ever stop to think what their own chances for em¬ 
ployment in modern libraries would be today, had it 
not been for the devoted labors of these same “old- 
fashioned” folk who literally made possible modern 
library development. These “old-fashioned” li¬ 
brarians included such men as Ainsworth Rand 
Spofford, Justin Winsor, Josephus Nelson Larned, 
William Frederick Poole, Charles Ammi Cutter, 
Charles C. Jewett, J. G. Cogswell, Anthony Panizzi, 
Richard Garnett, Henry Bradshaw, and a score of 
others I might mention. Happy indeed the genera- 

1 Read before the New York Library Association at Lake Placid, 

September 24,1918. 

3 Library Journal, January, 1919. 

183 


184 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 


tion which can claim such leaders! Well may we 
honor them today! They set a standard which won 
the reverence and respect of the world of letters. 
They made the name of librarian honored and revered 
in places where his position had been held somewhat 
above a mere clerkship, somewhat lower than a school¬ 
master’s post. As “modern” librarians, with our faces 
set toward the possibilities of what we conceive to be 
a true service to society, we may well pause to pay 
tribute to their memory, and to inquire a moment 
as to their distinguishing traits. 

What strikes one first in studying the lives of these 
men of the generation which passed off the stage of 
library work about 1900 (or a little earlier) is that 
they were one and all collectors of rare skill. They 
all seem to have had an instinctive sense of book 
values, an eye for treasures, a scent for the perma¬ 
nently useful work. The libraries which they headed 
were in most cases actually brought together, built up, 
strengthened, by their own labors. How many, 
many times have I had occasion at the Library of 
Congress to echo my chief’s sentiment—“It’s ill 
gleaning after Dr. Spofford!” How often did I find 
that his keen instinct had brought to the Library of 
Congress exactly those books for which scholars 
sought decades later. The Astor, the Lenox, the 
Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Public Library, the 
Library of Congress, the Buffalo Library, the Brook- 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 185 


lyn Library were, in the old days, real libraries—not 
buildings almost empty of books, with high sounding 
dedicatory inscriptions and the names of great au¬ 
thors across their fronts—and few of their works 
inside—but collections of strong and-valuable books. 
The present eminence of two of those I have named, 
the consolidated New York Public Library, and the 
Library of Congress, is due not to their palatial 
buildings, not to their magnificently organized staffs 
—great as these are—but to the foundation of books 
of worth laid by their old-fashioned librarians through 
fifty years. “The successful librarian,” according to a 
somewhat apocryphal saying attributed to Dr. Poole, 
“must be a good buyer, a good beggar,—and (occa¬ 
sionally) a good thief.” To what an extent certain 
of his compeers followed out all three of these re¬ 
quirements more than one of our libraries bear 
witness. 

Moreover these men of the later nineteenth century 
—for we move so fast that even these seem remote 
from our day—were generally good conservators. 
They took good care of good things. They understood 
the difference between an original New England 
Primer, or Poor Richard’s Almanac, or Shakespeare 
quarto, and the modern reprint or text-edition. 
Sometimes they took too good care of their treasures 
for the convenience of the man in haste or the busy 
reporter. But I observe that their libraries still own 


186 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 

these same treasures, and are holding on to them with 
a firmness which is in no way different from that of 
old. Perhaps they made all books a little hard to get 
at in their zeal to save their valuable ones. For this, 
however, the structural materials available in their 
day, the types of buildings, and the physical limita¬ 
tions and dangers imposed by mill construction, 
wooden cases, non-fireproof rooms, and old-fashioned 
safes were fully as much to blame as the spirit of the 
librarian. Few people in library work realize the part 
which the electric light, structural and sheet steel, 
electric elevators, heavy plate glass, and the like have 
played in revolutionizing library methods. Much 
of our modern theory and practice is due to the 
engineer and inventor rather than to the librarian. 
In fact many of the things which we do daily and 
hourly our predecessors could not do for lack of the 
means—telephone, for instance. 

The old-fashioned librarian of any distinction was 
preeminently scholarly in his tastes and habits. His 
equipment was usually such as to win the respect 
of the best minds in his community. He could not 
conceive what I sometimes hear called the “library 
business.” His attitude was distinctly that of the man 
of learning and attainments. Need I call the roll 
again to prove that the leaders in the past generation 
were men not of scholarship merely, but of productive 
scholarship as well? Even those who confined them- 


CHANGING IDEALS N LIBRARIANSHIP 187 


selves more particularly to librarianship were produc¬ 
ers—witness Mr. Larned’s series of books, Dr. Poole's 
Index, Dr. Spofford’s invaluable Almanacs, C. A. 
Cutter’s Expansive Classification,—not to mention 
others. We may well search our own generation for 
their equals. One of our greatest perils is the exalta¬ 
tion of executive ability over scholarly attainment. 
One of our greatest needs is the development of 
scholarly executives, men who while able to direct 
great libraries in the modern spirit of service of the 
community, are yet in sympathetic touch with the 
world of letters and with productive research. Shorn 
of such sympathies and abilities, our librarianship 
will surely degenerate into the common mold of “big 
business.” And what American libraries may become 
if bereft of the tinge of humane letters, we may well 
shudder to consider. On you who are younger in the 
practice of our calling falls the duty and the high 
opportunity of combining the scholarly ideals of our 
former leaders with the energizing zeal and skill 
of the modern director of corporate activities. 

But I have not yet exhausted the list of enviable 
characteristics of our old-fashioned librarians of dis¬ 
tinction. Most of them showed two other traits in a 
marked degree—unselfish devotion to their work, and 
high professional pride in their calling. I could fill 
the remainder of this hour with anecdotes showing 
both these traits. But let me at least pause long 


188 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 


enough to read you the beautiful lines which Herbert 
Putnam wrote on the death of Ainsworth Rand 
Spofford in 1908: 

A. R. S. 

1825-1908 
The Epilogue 

He Toiled long, well, and with Good Cheer 
In the Service of Others 
Giving his Whole, Asking little 
Enduring patiently, Complaining 
Not at all 
With small Means 
Effecting Much 

He had no Strength that was not Useful 
No Weakness that was not Lovable 
No Aim that was not Worthy 
No Motive that was not Pure 

Ever he Bent 
His Eye upon the Task 
Undone 
Ever he Bent 
His Soul upon the Stars 
His Heart upon 
The Sun 

Bravely he Met 
His Test 

Richly he Earned 
His Rest 

What nobler tribute has any librarian had—or 
deserved? 

It is, of course, true that professional success in any 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 189 


line of work is never reached without devotion and 
wholesome pride. But when I recall the public spirit 
which inaugurated and carried through the various 
cooperative efforts of American librarians, the un¬ 
selfish and lasting love for the work which inspired 
men of high attainment to long and tedious labor 
without hope of personal reward, when I remember 
the willingness to aid other librarians, the spirit of 
mutual helpfulness which has been so long a dominant 
note in our profession, I congratulate you, and with 
you the ranks of American librarians, on your en¬ 
trance upon such an heritage. More than the col¬ 
lector’s skill, or the custodian’s zeal, more than schol¬ 
arship or learning, more than public esteem or high 
honor, is that spirit of high consecration to our call¬ 
ing and of willingness to serve one another gladly 
which form its best traditions. It was well and truly 
said of old: “Other men have labored, and ye are 
entered into their labors.” 

But highly as we may well think of our leaders of an 
earlier generation, greatly as we should and do esteem 
their ideals and their traditions of professional attain¬ 
ment, it remains true that their labors and their aims 
were directed as a rule to but one portion of the com¬ 
munity. They served the world of letters and the men 
and women of literary tastes and interests. The 
scholar, the research worker, the man of cultivated 
tastes, the student (young or old), the bookish folk in 


190 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRAE.IANSHIP 

the community—these were their clientele, and to the 
the interests of such classes they devoted the work of 
their libraries. Libraries were for them—and for 
their day—primarily the concern of learning and its 
devotees, of books as vehicles of instruction and of 
recreation. None dreamed that a few years would 
see almost a revolution in the conception of the possible 
users of books, and of the library’s duty toward the 
community as a whole. 

For we have “changed all that.” The library— 
whether we like it or not—(and with some of us it 
goes a bit hard!) has become socialized in its aims and 
in its practice. Its directors have gone out into the 
highways and by-ways and compelled folk to come in. 
The work of the New York Public Library today 
would seem to James Lenox a far cry from the uses 
he expected would be made of his endowments—but 
I believe he would rejoice greatly in it, could he see it 
in the full sweep of its noble service to the great city 
he loved so well. Without going into it historically, 
without stopping to trace the steps by which the old- 
fashioned library of 1850 has become the modern 
public library, we may, perhaps, profit by a brief 
survey of the present library situation. 

First and foremost we note the great increase in 
public libraries, an increase both in their number and 
in their size. Whereas in 1850 there were but few pub¬ 
lic libraries, in the modern sense, to be found in our 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 191 


country, now no considerable city is without one. 
More significant still is the great size of certain of our 
libraries. There are well over one hundred libraries 
having over two hundred thousand volumes each, 
and we have a growing group of the million class 
including the Library of Congress and the New York 
Public Library with over two million each, Harvard 
and the Boston Public Library with a million and a 
half each, Brooklyn and Yale in the millionaire class, 
and doubtless others which have attained that rank 
faster than the figures can be compiled and published. 

Along with this growth in great libraries has gone 
an even more significant spreading of the public li¬ 
brary over the entire country. There are in the 
aggregate vastly more books in small libraries in the 
United States than in the big ones. The one dis¬ 
tinctly American feature in the library “movement” 
is the small town or city library. Nowhere else is 
there anything quite similar to it. Big libraries are 
pretty much alike the world over. But our small 
American libraries are a class apart, and a very large 
class, too. 

In fact I have often found that European librarians 
had no conception of the function in our communities 
of the smaller public libraries. Collections of ten, 
twenty, thirty, fifty thousand volumes in small cities 
and large towns, tax-supported, reaching many sides 
of the town life, contributing to the working efficiency 


192 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 

of democratic communities, are as hard for, say, our 
French colleagues to understand, as are their more 
purely museum or research libraries strange to many 
American librarians, accustomed to a more popular 
service. It is just this element in our American li¬ 
brary gatherings, eager, helpful, full of plans for im¬ 
provement, for uplift, for reaching folk with books 
and papers, which chiefly distinguishes American 
library meetings and programs from those abroad. 
The service of the people—all the people—of the 
town and county with books through the medium of 
the public library, is the goal—more or less well at¬ 
tained—of our town libraries. This effort knows 
little—perhaps too little—of the scholar’s labors. 
Its speeches and papers do not smell offensively of the 
lamp, as Aeschines said of Demosthenes’ orations. 
But they do bear witness to a spirit of service which 
is the best trait of the smaller American libraries. 
When all is said and done these libraries form our 
distinctively American type; they are wholesome, 
clean, useful, inspiring. They are our contribution to 
popular education, following in the wake of the public 
school, and, like the school, capable of immense im¬ 
provement—and of a mighty social service. We 
should rejoice in them—even with all their limitations 
—for faulty service is more eloquent of future good 
than no service at all. Whatever may be said by 
pessimists in the profession or out of it, to the dis- 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 193 


repute of our small American libraries, they are at 
least very much alive. 

Paralleling this spread of the small library over the 
country has been the growth of the branch library idea 
in cities. I remember well visiting a branch library 
for the first time in Cleveland in 1896. Had I been a 
prophet, or the son of a prophet, I might have foretold 
how branch libraries would dot the maps of our large 
cities, while delivery stations and the like would sur¬ 
pass any and all predictions of library development. 
Not the large cities only, but the small towns now 
have branches. Even my own modest university 
town boasts not alone a public library—but two 
“branches” as well. Every effort is now being made 
with a well defined purpose to bring books home to 
people, to afford convenient service, to give (as Life 
might say) no man, woman or child a chance to escape 
the book. 

With this physical development—and that has cost 
millions on millions of the taxpayers’ money, helped 
out by Mr. Carnegie, to be sure—with this physical 
development of libraries has come a conscious effort 
at exploitation. This effort on its best side is magnif¬ 
icent in its possibilities for increased and increasing 
usefulness. The modern idea is to seek out every 
avenue of service, to do all the work that books can 
do when directed and interpreted by sympathetic 
and intelligent librarians. It is this conscious effort 


194 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 

to bring good books to play in the service of mankind 
which has given us many of our modern forms of li¬ 
brary work, such as all our work with children, with 
the schools, with clubs of various sorts, highly or¬ 
ganized reference work, extension work, traveling 
libraries, and so on almost without end. In short we 
librarians are convinced that all printed matter is our 
province—not necessarily literature alone in the old 
sense—and that it is our business to get things in 
print into the hands of every one who can profitably 
use them—whether he knows it or not. 

It is this intense conviction which lies back of the 
present agitation for publicity and advertising for 
libraries. It is a wholly natural and legitimate con¬ 
viction. Books and printed things are worth while, 
and should be known to thousands who suffer from 
lack of the help they can have for the asking. But, 
remembering whence we sprang, and whose heritors 
we are, let me urge you by all you treasure not to ad¬ 
vertise until you are sure of your wares. Be sure— 
to use modern slang—you “have the goods” before 
you push them into the light of “pitiless publicity.” 
It is perhaps not wholly without significance that 
some of the most ardent advocates of advertising for 
libraries come from libraries notoriously ill-equipped 
for service. 

Another phase of this conviction of the universal 
value of printed things is the growth of the so-called 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 195 


“special” libraries. Business men have found that 
they have hourly need for information found only 
in print. Professional men, engineers, doctors, law¬ 
yers, insurance men, bankers, manufacturers, are 
now gathering their own libraries, organizing them on 
the most modern lines, stealing some of our best 
people, even as the “movies” have stolen the best 
actresses from the “legitimate” drama. This move¬ 
ment—which has always existed—is only in its in¬ 
fancy. We are going to see print (not necessarily 
books) in the service of business and the professions 
to an undreamed-of degree. We see it even now in the 
service of legislation as no one even fifteen years ago 
supposed possible. And all this development means 
more—and better—librarians. 

Contemporaneously there has come a standardiza¬ 
tion of library technique. If you learn how to do any 
library process in one place, you can generally do it 
successfully in any other. This was not true even 
twenty years ago. How well I remember the 
common (and true) remark about library school 
graduates in the days when they were few. “You 
have to teach them first to unlearn most of the things 
they have learned in the library school.” That day is 
past, although our library schools have yet much to 
learn about both teaching and librarianship. There 
has come about a great amount of centralization of 
library work. The Library of Congress and the 


196 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 

American Library Association are now doing all sorts 
of things for all the libraries which twenty years ago 
each one did—more or less well—for itself. We are 
gradually, but surely, developing a body of library 
doctrine which can be taught, and which all novices 
will be required to learn. To this result, moreover, 
the library schools have contributed in no small degree. 

To sum up our survey: This is a day of thoughtful 
planning of library work, a day when we are trying 
to use all our plant all the time, or at least to make it 
all count all the time. It is a day when the use of 
slight, of even purely ephemeral, material— clippings, 
pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides, pictures—is being 
organized and made a part of regular library work as 
truly as ever were solid folios and stout quartos. It is 
a day of big libraries in every city, and big libraries 
largely made up of little libraries of duplicates. It is a 
day when the countryside has its books—or soon will 
have them—as well as the town and the city. Every 
school, every club, every church, and almost every 
factory and shop will soon have its small, special 
collection, the larger ones with trained librarians in 
charge. The book-using art is bound to grow, and our 
failure or success in leading and directing its growth 
is going to be the measure of our ability to rise to our 
opportunity. 

Now all this enormous growth has not come about 
without some grave consequences. In fact it is not 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 197 


too much to say that we stand at a crisis in library 
affairs. There is on us a very real conflict between 
quality and quantity, between loyalty to our pro¬ 
fessional ideals, what we know to be good service, and 
the pressure of an ever-increasing demand. Never 
have we seen so many things to be done, or felt so 
keenly our own call to serve. There is a disquieting 
dispositon to spread our energies over too great a 
number of things, to take on too much work, and to 
advertise far beyond our ability to perform. It is a 
very insidious temptation, and I believe it assails the 
heads of small libraries even more subtly than their 
colleagues with greater and heavier demands and 
resources. 

In fact, if I were disposed to play the role of an 
unfriendly critic—which I am not—I think I should 
have to say that as a profession we have not success¬ 
fully resisted this temptation, this pressure to ex¬ 
pand beyond our powers of faithful and efficient per¬ 
formance. In one sense mediocrity may be said to be 
the key to the library situation in America at the 
present day. We have few really strong libraries, few 
very fine collections, few wonderfully expert librarians. 
We have numbers—large numbers—of fair buildings, 
fairly good collections, moderately successful li¬ 
brarians and assistants. This state of affairs is bal¬ 
anced to a great extent by our spirit of service, by our 
standardized technique, by our very effort to keep 


198 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 


abreast of the best thought in the profession. But the 
ugly facts remain that the demand for extension in the 
way of branches has seriously handicapped the devel¬ 
opment of strong, well-equipped central libraries; 
the need for all sorts of new work has drawn off too 
many able people from the regular lines of service; 
the supply of trained librarians is by no means equal 
to the demand. There is a woeful tendency to imitate 
in service, and, worst of all, there is a great dearth 
of good books in very many of these new lines of 
publication. The trash which is being published to¬ 
day on various phases of business, and which is going 
on to our library shelves, is but one illustration of that 
tendency to mediocrity—and worse—of which I am 
regretfully speaking. There is no doubt about the 
fact—quantity lords it over quality in too many 
phases of our work today. 

May I, then, in view of all I have just said, venture 
on some seasonable advice to my younger colleagues? 
Before everything let no man deceive you by saying 
that this is a day of great movements, of blind forces 
beyond the individual’s power to control. It is not so. 
No man can escape his age. But in no age or time 
has personality counted as it does now. We come 
back to the man, to the woman, every time. Here in 
all this welter of the modern complex is your chance, 
your own chance, to make yourself count. 

One of your greatest assets will be an ability to say 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 199 


“No”—and to say it very loud and clear. The pecu¬ 
liar temptation of women librarians seems to be to 
take on more than they can carry out. As Kipling 
once said, they are “over-engined for their beam.” 
Poise in library work—as in all other work—comes 
from a serene self-knowledge, and that includes a 
knowledge of one’s limitations as well as of one’s 
possibilities. 

You will not succeed unless you do some one thing 
supremely well. It is perhaps too early to say what 
that may be. But remember, the future in library 
work is one of specialization within the profession. 
When you find a line which you follow with ease, with 
pleasure, with eagerness, stick to following it. So 
will you find and do your best work. And finally, I beg 
you, do not enter on your work with any small view 
of the possibilities of our calling. This is a day when 
the nation’s call to service rings in our ears. Library 
work is service. It cannot be anything else. In it 
are no great rewards of money or fame. But there are 
great things to be done. The work calls for devotion, 
for learning, for character, for service. 

One service especially has been now laid on us with an 
ever-growing heaviness. We have—perhaps lightly— 
assumed the burden of supplying the reading of our 
soldiers and sailors, at home in training, abroad on 
service or in hospital. The librarians of the country 
through the American Library Association in the 


200 CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP 

summer of 1917 volunteered to conduct special li¬ 
brary work for the new armies soon to assemble. We 
went to the American people in the fall and asked them 
for money. They gave it, generously, freely. Amid 
a thousand perplexities such as beset any new effort 
on a huge scale our War Service Committee organ¬ 
ized our forces, brought thousands, yes, millions, of 
books and of dollars to effective use in camps, in 
hospitals, on our ships. The Library War Service of 
the American Library Association stands today a 
living, active, moving proof of the vitality and power 
of American library ideals. 

But proud as we are of what has been done there 
yet looms large before us a greater task. We need the 
best effort of every librarian, of each library trustee. 
What we have done has not been accomplished 
easily. There has been much hard work, much sacri¬ 
fice—both of ease and of cherished conviction and 
opinion. The work ahead of us calls for more, and 
yet more people. It calls for you! 

I said the admirable work we have done had not 
been accomplished easily. There have been earnest 
and sincere differences of opinion. There at first 
were delays—heart-breaking delays—and difficulties. 
Decisions have had to be made—with the military 
ends of the army and navy always in view—which 
have not pleased some very earnest and very loyal 
folk among us. There will be more differences, and 


CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIAN SHIP 201 


more difficulties. But what do these things matter? 
It is the work, our work, the best work librarians ever 
did, which counts. To it I beg you all to rally with 
but one purpose, one aim, one resolve. Support the 
War Service! Get behind it! Work for it! Make it 
better! Let every camp and hospital librarian, every 
volunteer at dispatch offices, on the transports, at 
Headquarters, in France, feel your interest, your deter¬ 
mination. We are not going to fail our men! They 
need books and our best brains. If librarianship has 
any force, any ideals, if it means anything, then we 
must forget all our differences, and go forward 
together. 


OUR COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRA¬ 
RIES—A SURVEY AND A PROGRAM 1 - 2 

This is a day of stock-taking. Ancient institu¬ 
tions, established forms of government, the whole 
order of society find themselves compelled to justify 
not their methods but their very existence. The 
world-cataclysm of 1914 to 1918 has had enormous 
destructive powers. The job of beating Germany 
and her allies has shaken the whole race (at least 
in the Occident) out of century-old ruts. We have 
had to bestir ourselves—the whole Western World 
has had to bestir itself—to unaccustomed tasks, 
and now that we have at last won a military triumph, 
no one is quite content to settle back into the old 
routine. The discontented and angered folk who 
have been grievously unhappy for decades—and 
often with too much reason—are rushing forth with 
mighty shoutings and much spilling of ink in this 
country—and much spilling of the blood of wretched 
humanity in eastern Europe. We are conscious 
that everything we have been accustomed to do, 
and much that we have been accustomed to think, 

1 An address before the Ohio College Association, April, 1919. 

2 School and Society , vol. XII, no. 299, pp. 205-214, September 
18,1920. 


202 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 203 


is practically on trial. “Schools and the means of 
education,” said the old Ordinance of 1787, estab¬ 
lishing civil government in that Northwest Territory 
in which we live, “Schools and the means of educa¬ 
tion, shall forever be encouraged.” One hundred 
and thirty-three years later we find ourselves forced 
to drop our complacency, and to justify not the 
encouragement merely—but even the existence, of 
the “means of education.” My particular concern 
is with one of these—our libraries. Of what sort 
are our college and university libraries, how ought 
they to function, do they do it, are they worth 
while? 

I take it that there are just three uses of 
libraries in the academic scheme of things—too 
frequently a “sorry scheme of things,” if one may 
believe the talk at gatherings of professors and 
students. The college library exists as an instru¬ 
ment of instruction, as an instrument of research, 
and as one of the means of attaining what (for 
want of a better word) we call culture. Inci¬ 
dentally it furnishes a livelihood, more or less pre¬ 
carious, for a certain number of folk, but we librarians 
may not justify its continuance and support on 
that score, any more than on the Ordinance of 
1787. If one may find other reasons than these 
three—instruction, research, culture—for the college 
library, they would undoubtedly be in the direction 


204 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

of preserving for future generations the record of 
the cultural condition of our day, a task which 
would be fully as well performed by libraries of 
another sort. It is, then in their threefold aspect, 
their relations to teaching, to investigation, and to 
the development of a rounded, informed, and sensi¬ 
tive mind, that I wish to survey our college libraries 
before setting out what I conceive to be their more 
immediate needs. 

I take it that to this audience I need not insist 
that the college or university includes the faculties 
as well as the students. Provision for the needs of 
both is necessarily demanded of the academic type of 
library. To the layman the needs of the student— 
particularly in the field of instruction—are far more 
apparent than are the no less vital requirements of 
his instructors; requirements vital because by study 
alone may be kept alive that spirit of scholarship 
without which no college rises far above the level of 
the city trade-school or the old-fashioned young- 
ladies seminary. 

One may assume, as a reasonable postulate in 
instruction, that a fair supply of modern books is 
necessary to training the average undergraduate. 
Further, that certain minimum facilities in the way 
of buildings and rooms are needed for libraries. 
And finally, that there are really no libraries without 
some people to serve them. How nearly are our 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 205 


libraries competent in these three matters, the 
barest fundamentals of libraries as vehicles of in¬ 
struction? 

Take first the field of literature—pure literature 
or belles-lettres. It is a sorry college which does 
not give instruction in the English, French, German, 
Italian, Spanish, Latin and Greek languages. Now 
the whole modern trend is to attempt to minimize 
instruction in the mechanics of language in favor of 
instruction in literature. But real instruction in 
literature is impossible without books, books which 
the student may and must read for himself. Talking 
and reading about books will never prove a satis¬ 
factory method save for cramming for examinations. 
That means that no very thorough or competent 
work in English literature can be given except on 
the basis of a well-rounded collection of English, 
American, Canadian and Australian books in the 
fields of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and so on. 
Of course Gothic can be taught with half a dozen 
books—there are practically no monuments of the 
Gothic tongue beside the Bible of Ulfilas. Anglo- 
Saxon may be studied with only fifty or a hundred 
volumes. But from the time of Chaucer to the 
present day—from Middle English to the course on 
the short story (to put it in terms of the curriculum) 
—the range in the English tongue alone demands at 
least four or five thousand volumes as a minimum— 
Heaven knows where the outer limits might be! 


206 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

Then there is a French literature with its wealth 
of classic and modern writers. The average Michi¬ 
gan or Ohio college gives instruction in French, a 
few courses in classic drama, in modern prose writers, 
and the like, but I venture to say that there is hardly 
a single comprehensive and strong collection of 
French literature in the two states—certainly our 
collection at Michigan (though large) is faulty and 
defective. We can give little sample courses in 
parts of French literature—but our libraries will 
not furnish to students or faculties that survey of 
the output of the French literary spirit which alone 
will allow them to grasp its proportions and its real 
significance in the history of human thought. Even 
complete sets of the masters are often wanting in 
our smaller colleges. A library which has less than 
a couple of thousand volumes in its French collections 
is ridiculously inadequate for undergraduate instruc¬ 
tion in French literature. 

And now shall I call the roll of the other tongues: 
German from the Minnesingers to Luther and to 
Heine; Italian from Petrarch to d’Annunzio; Spanish 
from the Chronicle of the Cid to Ibafiez; Portuguese, 
Dutch, Norse, Swedish, Danish? And the authors 
of the ancient world, Greek and Latin, in particular 
—are we not their direct heirs? Of course we can, 
and do, teach Greek and Latin and German and 
Spanish and even those Slavic tongues whose litera- 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 207 


tures I have not ventured to mention. But we do 
but poorly for our undergraduates when we give 
them a text-book and a dictionary and require them 
merely to translate as an exercise in mental gymnas¬ 
tics with supposedly incidental benefit to their 
English style. If they get by actual contact no 
notion of the place of their text in its national litera¬ 
ture, then our libraries are but shams as means of 
instruction in literature. 

And in the field of letters I have failed to mention 
vast areas with which a competent student, even as 
an undergraduate, should have at least, as Emerson 
said of Arabic, a bowing acquaintance. There is 
the whole Oriental world—Chinese, Japanese, the 
Semitic literatures, generally undreamed of by our 
so-called “literary” student. Of course no one is 
for an instant saying that the average college should 
have a good collection of Japanese or Arabic books. 
But it should have enough of these (and their com¬ 
peers) in both the originals and in English versions 
to inform, let us say, the intending missionary that 
the “heathen” are at least not without letters. 

Before leaving this inviting subject of the things 
the average undergraduate doesn’t encounter—he is, 
after all, a friendly and fine youth, our substitute 
for “the child” of the pedagogue’s familiar discourse 
—may I at least mention the character of the books 
on religion in the ordinary college or university 


208 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 


library? Can we not have some way of relegating 
to upper shelves—if not to outer darkness—the leav¬ 
ings from the libraries of deceased ministers? We 
all know how far they are removed from the present 
day. There is no dearth of good and fine books on 
religious topics, but the college library seldom owns 
them, or, if it does, they are submerged in the flood 
of ancient commentaries and treatises on topics once 
timely and absorbing, now uninteresting save to the 
theological historian. The great classics of reli¬ 
gious literature seldom stand out of the ruck, as 
they should, and the student “passes up” the whole 
lot—more’s the pity, for he inevitably gets the idea 
that books on religion are all dead. 

Well, we don’t seem wholly competent in the field 
of instruction in the literature of the world. How 
about history, particularly modern history? The 
whole American public has recently learned inti¬ 
mately of peoples and places hitherto known to but 
a few professors, and demands instruction in history 
and geography for its sons and daughters. Of 
course we can furnish text-books again, and a few 
larger treatises. But professors insist that they 
can’t teach history by the text-book method alone, 
and we librarians agree with them. And the diffi¬ 
culties in the way of securing an adequate supply 
of documents, texts, treatises and printed source- 
material for the undergraduate study of American 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 209 


history alone are formidable even for the university 
library. How much more for the enormous field of 
European history? Yet European and American 
history do not comprise world-history. Here are 
Asia and Africa and South America demanding their 
place at the peace-conference and in the League of 
Nations. Can you teach American history with a 
text-book, the Old-South leaflets, Hart’s American 
History Told by Contemporaries , MacDonald’s Select- 
Characters , and the War Encyclopaedia of the Com¬ 
mittee on Public Information? Well, a good many 
people are doing it on about that equipment, perhaps 
with a file of the Congressional Globe and a few public 
documents thrown in. Of course it isn’t done in 
Ohio or Michigan colleges! Can one teach medieval 
history successfully to undergraduates without— 
well, I’ll not attempt a list. Nobody ever did teach 
medieval history without falling back more or less 
on the lecture method, and praying that his students 
got some notions of the feudal system and the glories 
of city life in the thirteenth century from those slim 
aids he was able to place before them in an English 
dress. 

I shall not dare to say what is a competent equip¬ 
ment in history for undergraduate instruction in a 
college library. But one thing I am sure of; nobody 
has yet complained of a surfeit of material. 

And with history there are associated economics 


210 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

and sociology and anthropology and philosophy. 
Of course we are getting into deep waters here. 
There is always the fight between the idea of lecture 
plus text-book, and the notion of a first-hand study 
of documents and evidence in print. Many of the 
men who lecture or quiz on a text do so just because 
the other method is not possible without a competent 
equipment in the college library. It is perfectly safe 
to say that once the introductory courses are passed, 
instruction in economics, in sociology, in any of the 
sciences of human relations, demands many, many 
books. It demands documents of the governments, 
statistics, maps, all the output of the busy offices 
investigating and reporting on all manner of people 
and things. Even our great university libraries are 
mostly inadequate to supplying the needs of this 
sort of instruction. Take international law, for 
example—long a subject of instruction for seniors at 
Michigan since the days of President Angelas famous 
lectures. The literature of the subject is amazing 
in its extent and range—even a selection would 
strain the purse of the average college. But the 
boys are all debating topics of international law, 
mainly on the basis of the Literary Digest , and 
the pamphlets of the Association for International 
Conciliation. Surely our college libraries are only 
barely competent in this subject, and this is typical 
of the whole group. 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 211 


So far I have said not a word about natural and 
applied science. We have finally learned to teach 
these subjects in laboratories, but we have as yet 
but faintly sensed the fact that the record of the 
progress of science as set forth in journals and the 
great treatises is an essential part of the subject- 
matter of instruction. We make our students learn 
the technique of the microscope or the photometer, 
but seldom do we require them to learn the technique 
of the catalogs of the Royal Society or the Index 
Medicus. Here again it is the fault—in part—of the 
library equipment which has directed the method of 
of teaching. Laboratories and note-books are not 
enough for undergraduate, still less graduate, teach¬ 
ing in science. The student needs to be familiar 
with at least the great journals and the great refer¬ 
ence books, if he is to get the true benefit of scientific 
study. Not skill alone in observation and its re¬ 
cording, but an ability to run down quickly what 
has been published on similar observation, marks 
the young scientist of real ability and of severe 
training. And without an adequate library the 
otherwise brilliant student in natural science generally 
lacks that historic sense which so distinguishes the 
master from the neophyte, and whose absence so 
generally marks (and mars) our American scientists 
of the present day. You may call the roll of the 
sciences from astronomy to zoology—no one of them 


212 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

gives proper undergraduate instruction by the 
laboratory alone. 

Please note that I am ignoring absolutely the whole 
field of the applied sciences and technology, of the 
domestic and industrial arts, subjects which have 
forced their way into college curricula, and on which 
there exists an enormous body of books—books which 
go out of date almost faster than they are printed. 
And the great field of the fine arts I am likewise 
deliberately omitting. Properly to equip a depart¬ 
ment of the fine arts in such a fashion that even 
elementary courses of instruction in art history and 
criticism can be pursued successfully, requires an 
expenditure of money far in excess of the ordinary 
resources of our American colleges. Not only are 
the necessary books legion in number—their cost is 
so great that but few libraries without special endow¬ 
ments may attempt to enter on their systematic 
purchase. 

If then the ordinary equipment in books suffices 
only for the barest needs of undergraduate instruc¬ 
tion, what shall we say of college library buildings 
from the point of view of teaching? Well, the less 
said the better. There are only some half dozen 
college library buildings in the country which appear 
to have been consciously planned with a view to their 
use in instruction. As a rule, every sort of need 
must be met in a single general reading room, usually 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 213 


noisy and serving together faculty and students both 
advanced and elementary. There are frequently 
small collections scattered in laboratories and class¬ 
rooms about the campus, designed, as a rule, for the 
convenience of professors and advanced students. 
But buildings deliberately planned for facilitating 
undergraduate study are conspicuous by their ab¬ 
sence. In fact the pretty little library buildings 
which are the pride of many colleges are veritable 
frauds when considered from any scientific or pro¬ 
fessional point of view. They are vague architec¬ 
turally, just because our college libraries are vague. 
They show no differentiation of functions, just 
because the college library has not been grasped as 
a teaching instrument. Most of them might just 
as well have been planned for public libraries, save 
for some few special rooms for research. 

If my contentions are sound, we must confess that 
the college with less than a hundred thousand volumes 
is but ill prepared to give modern work in the human¬ 
ities and in science. The college with no special 
library building is probably better able to adapt its 
library to purposes of instruction than one possessing 
a modest little architectural gem, the gift of some 
grateful alumnus. And what of the library service, 
which, far more than bricks and mortar, makes a 
library? 

The most conspicuous feature of our college library 


214 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

service in the past twenty-five years has been its 
devoted sacrifice. Librarians have been making 
bricks without straw, have been trying to make one 
book do the work of five, have been all things to all 
men, but with the usual result of satisfying no one— 
themselves included. I can not name a college or 
university library in the United States today which 
is adequately manned to render such effective ser¬ 
vice as our hospitals and even our laboratories give. 
American librarians have developed a technique 
which works fairly well and which is admittedly 
superior to that in vogue in Europe, but it takes 
more money to apply it than most colleges have 
felt themselves able to afford. Most conspicuously 
have the librarians of colleges been obliged to lag 
behind their colleagues in public library work, chiefly 
because of lack of funds. In twenty-five years of 
library work I have never seen the time when I 
had enough force of a high grade to do well all the 
work which lay at hand, and I have served in libraries 
of no less standing than Princeton, the Library of 
Congress and the University of Michigan. If you 
would develop the library into an efficient aid in 
teaching, you must give it the means of functioning 
at a high level of efficiency. That means a trained 
staff furnished with proper tools, and large enough 
to carry the full work of their individual offices. 

For purposes of instruction, then, if there is to be 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 215 


proper instruction worthy of the twentieth century 
in a free democracy, the college library should have 
books in large measure—say a hundred or a hundred 
and fifty thousand books to each thousand students. 
There should be provision for separate reading and 
study rooms for certain undergraduate classes, and 
not only should there be an adequate staff for general 
library purposes, but in addition a special library 
staff (or detail) to aid in undergraduate study. This 
is a very modest program, hardly up to the level of our 
professed needs, but to reach it would cause most of 
our college libraries to double their number of vol¬ 
umes, to say nothing of their library budgets for 
maintenance. 

So much for instruction. What about research? 
How many of you men who are sincerely trying to 
advance the boundaries of knowledge in your chosen 
field find the library resources of your own college or 
university adequate to your needs? How many of 
you can conscientiously keep a promising student 
under your care rather than send him off to New 
York, Boston, Chicago, or to Europe? I venture 
to say, as a result of years of trying to bring men 
and books together, that, outside of four or five 
great centers, there are not half a dozen American 
libraries competent for research, save in some very 
limited fields. A scholar in Great Britain or France, 
for example, whatever the defects of his home library, 


216 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

can get to London or Paris quickly and from London 
to Paris in eight hours. Between the British Museum 
and the Bibliotheque Nationale he has a fair show 
of finding all he wants in the way of printed books. 
But what chance has his colleague in Columbus, 
or Cincinnati or Cleveland or Ann Arbor? Chicago 
is the nearest library center—and it is by no means 
comparable with either London or Paris. 

Now without the opportunity for research at 
home, you know full well the temptations that beset 
the scholar. How quickly the pressure of teaching, 
of executive and committee duties, the necessity for 
providing for a growing family in a day of high prices, 
force the man who might have advanced knowledge 
and made illustrious the college in which he resides 
to abandon little by little those high aims and pur¬ 
poses with which he began his college teaching. 
The most vital need of American scholarship to-day 
as I see it, is not the so-called endowment of research, 
but the provisions of the materials for research in 
college and university libraries. Given the books, 
the scholar will infallibly use them to the lasting 
benefit of his kind. 

In fact, I question seriously whether there will 
long be such a thing as American scholarship without 
a rapid and far-reaching increase of our means of 
research. Our really advanced and thorough going 
scholarship has been largely “made in Germany,” 
or at least made in Europe. 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 217 


Of what avail is it to bring to this central region 
a young man trained in the study of the history of 
science, for example? He will find no long series of 
academic transactions and proceedings, no masses 
of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century 
treatises on his topic, no array of the minor learned 
societies in which appear those precious biographical 
notices of the less conspicuous savants. Indeed it 
is even doubtful whether that universal resource of 
the man stalled in pursuit of a date or an anecdote, 
our old friend Notes and Queries is waiting on the 
library shelves. He must borrow and beg hither 
and yon, and by the time he gets his monograph 
half done some Dane or Dutchman anticipates him 
by the publication oj a treatise containing all those 
citations he has sought for in vain by correspondence 
across the continent. No wonder he retires in dis¬ 
gust from his own field and becomes an efficient 
extension lecturer or a noted “dean of men." Until 
we make our libraries instruments of research we 
shall have to depend on European study and sab¬ 
batical years for the fulfillment of the dreams of 
those who are obedient to the heavenly vision of 
exact science. 

A further query is permissible as to the competence 
for research of our library buildings, supposing the 
resources in the way of books to be good. How 
far have university libraries—for the question chiefly 


218 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

concerns them—been planned as workshops? We 
should distinguish sharply between facilities for 
training students in the methods of research, such as 
are afforded by seminar rooms and the like, and 
provision for independent investigation on the part 
either of professors or advanced students. Most 
modern library buildings have the former, more 
or less well worked out. But few of them have 
been designed with a view to giving convenient and 
quiet places for individual study in the immediate 
vicinity of the books—places where books may be 
reserved, manuscripts locked up, and where an in¬ 
vestigator may work continuously or intermittently 
as his needs permit. We expect any investigator in 
the natural sciences to have his laboratory, often a 
private laboratory. But too few of our libraries— 
which are, of course, the laboratories for men working 
in all the fields of letters and arts—too few of our 
libraries, I say, are planned with proper provision 
for isolation and with conveniences for continued 
study. Still less are the book-stacks generally 
designed with a view to frequentation by a large 
number of workers. Compactness of storage must 
be sacrificed to convenience of movement in con¬ 
sulting books, if we are to have our libraries work¬ 
shops for research. This plan of building is costly 
both in space and money. But anything less ex¬ 
pensive of both is more costly in those precious hours 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 219 


and minutes which our scholars, burdened with 
executive and teaching duties, can spare for research. 
If books are badly lighted, stored in stacks with 
narrow and dark aisles, remote from tables and 
study rooms, and dusty into the bargain, how great 
the loss of efficiency! 

But if instruction and research are too often but 
ill-cared-for in college libraries, what of that subtle 
thing we call culture? Culture, to be sure, cometh 
not with understanding. It defies analysis, and it 
does not necessarily result from ample provision and 
and forethought any more than a humble and a con¬ 
trite heart necessarily arises from what used to be 
called “the means of grace.” But still less does it 
arise from the utter absence of the things ordinarily 
associated with it. And so far as culture comes 
from intimate, daily contact with books of high 
character, it can not be produced where books of 
this sort and people are not brought together on 
terms of ease and familiarity. 

In fact, as I study our college curricula and our 
college plants, I am frequently led to ask myself 
whether we are honest in our invitation to students 
to come to us for four or more years. I am no 
laudator temp oris acti. But to me the very success 
of our old and narrow college curriculum seems a 
challenge to us who have departed so far from its 
tradition. The emphasis in our old American col- 


220 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

leges used to be on training that produced men. It 
did not produce scholars, nor was it a vocational 
preparation. Lowell's plea for the university in 
which nothing useful was taught was (more than even 
he knew) a true apology for the education which 
made the college men of his day leaders of their 
time. Now that time has gone. Plain living, to 
be sure, is coming back into academic circles by sheer 
force of need. But is high thinking dwelling with 
it? Our world is a very different place in this year 
of grace from that New England whose college 
graduates, trained in letters and mathematics alone, 
became lawyers by study in an office, doctors by 
being apprenticed to a physician, ministers by way of 
the theological seminary, and leaders in politics by 
native force appealing to moral issues. We have 
changed our college training in almost every subject 
taught and we have added so many subjects that 
our very announcements are thicker than ten 
years’ catalogs of the old days. But are we mak¬ 
ing men—and women—as did our fathers? Men 
trained to logical processes of thought, to exact 
attainment in mathematics or pure science, to 
familiarity with at least a few great authors, able 
to speak on their feet and to write clear and forceful 
English? If we are not so training men, why ask 
them to go to college? 

The ignorance of the average student on all cul- 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 221 


tural subjects really passes belief. You can “start 
something” by a reference to the All-American foot¬ 
ball team, or to a political topic or nowadays to 
socialism, but when you sound the undergraduate on 
things literary, artistic, musical, geographical, or 
historical, you find, as a rule, mere blank lack of 
knowledge. He is untrained in matters of color 
or form, he generally lacks musical taste, and he 
ignores the significance of scientific discovery. Can 
libraries help this state of mind? Certainly they 
can not unless they are inviting in plan, well equipped 
with books and journals, and not kept down in their 
books and magazines to the subjects of instruction 
in the college curriculum. As a nation we have con¬ 
tributed but little to the fine arts or to critical judg¬ 
ments on things of the spirit. There is every evidence 
that we have wakened in the last three decades to our 
artistic and cultural shortcomings. But the new 
regard for form and color and beauty of line shown 
in the erection of fifty-odd museums of art in Ameri¬ 
can cities in the past thirty years has penetrated 
to few of our colleges, and to the college libraries 
perhaps least of all. Happy are institutions like 
Oberlin whose new Art Gallery is a veritable in¬ 
spiration. Happy also those few libraries which, 
themselves beautiful, have been given the means 
to make beauty and truth attractive through books. 

What then may I offer as a practical program in the 


222 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

face of the shortcomings with which I have perhaps 
wearied you? This is a practical age and it seems 
largely peopled by folk—like myself—born in Mis¬ 
souri. 

First with regard to instruction—I would urge the 
definite recognition of the fact that the college library 
is the sole laboratory for all the studies which we 
term humane, and a training ground for a great 
part of those we call scientific. As a laboratory for 
the humanities, it demands money, the massed 
laboratory funds for these subjects. If given a 
reasonable portion of the total college income—at 
least six, better ten, per cent—it should soon be 
adequate in its book supply and its service to the 
demands of teaching. Without some such provision, 
it will always be starved. 

Its building or quarters should differentiate sharply 
between functions. It is not hard to manage this— 
the difficult thing is to get architects and trustees and 
presidents to see the problem. Required reading, 
for example, can be handled expeditiously enough 
and quietly also, if only segregated from general 
reading and research. Advanced instruction is very 
simply cared for, if it, too, is planned in advance. 
And the cultural effect of direct contact with the 
library’s store of books can be secured—and what 
a boon it is!—in most colleges by taking a leaf out 
of the open-access plan of public libraries. No 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 223 


matter how plain the library’s quarters, proper 
exhibit space, well used, will aid in developing the 
cultural side of the library work. And a cheery 
reading room, furnished with plenty of books and 
magazines on open shelves will do more than ex¬ 
hibits. Mark Hopkins once said that a boy couldn’t 
rub up against the college buildings for four years 
without absorbing some Latin. By the same token 
he can’t see interesting things in print about him for 
four years and continuously resist the impulse to 
read for himself. Plan for this sort of result, and 
you get it. Let things drift—and they drift. 

But when we come to research the program is not 
so easy. Here no amount of goodwill may at once 
or easily overcome the inherent difficulty—that is, 
lack of the books. Cooperation with other libraries, 
the using of the library resources of the state or 
region as one instrument, is the most practical sug¬ 
gestion I can offer. This means cooperation with 
public libraries, and with national and state agencies. 
It means pooling of interests and a definite resolve 
to build up the strong collections along the line of 
their strength. The inter-library loan is in its in¬ 
fancy. Some day we shall have really rapid postal 
service by way of the air, and books may go in safety 
from Cleveland to Cincinnati in two or three hours 
time and be back the next day. In many European 
countries the government franks books sent from 


224 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 

one library to another. In this country—thanks to 
wholesome sentiment—we do this only for books for 
the blind. Surely our intellectual leaders should 
deserve as good treatment as those defectives whose 
plight appeals to sympathy. Thus we may some¬ 
time cheaply and quickly aid each other. 

But cooperation means more than lending. It 
means refraining from buying in some field in which 
a neighbor is strong. At Michigan we do not, for 
example, buy genealogy, just because the Detroit 
Public Library is rich in that field appealing to so 
many people. We do not buy unusual books that 
we know are in the White Collection in the Cleveland 
Public Library. We try to make stronger our 
Shakespeare and English Drama collections rather 
than pay extravagant prices for minor American 
poets. This means self-denying ordinances for many 
a college library, if the plan be carried out. But it 
likewise means effective research work in our colleges 
and universities. If this association should begin 
now to limit fields, to agree to lend freely, to cooperate 
with the state and the public libraries of Ohio, if 
it should pool its purchasing powers, and should 
even agree to send students from one college to 
another to work in certain special collections, in 
ten years’ time research facilities in Ohio would be 
so vastly improved that there would be no need to 
fear for the future of Ohio scholarship. Men would 


COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 


225 


seek places in Ohio faculties instead of fleeing to the 
great city universities. The college libraries of the 
state would function as a single instrument of 
research. And this is not Utopian—it is a severely 
practical plan born of experience and based on a 
knowledge of conditions. 

Of course this sort of thing demands the profes¬ 
sionally trained librarian as a director of the college 
or university library. Without his care and over¬ 
sight, the libraries will continue to function but 
haltingly. Our librarians have been seeing visions 
and dreaming dreams as a result of their war work. 
One of those dreams is of the chance to prove what 
they can do for the college world, if given the means 
and the help. That dream may be fulfilled very 
shortly, if you but sense the vast possibilities of 
cooperation in the library work of a region, and the 
need of a plan in your home library work. Drifting 
in education leads nowhere. Least of all does it 
produce success. 


THE LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL 
EDUCATION 1 ’ 2 


I have been asked to speak on the subject “The 
library an essential agent in conserving and ad¬ 
vancing the results of formal school education.” 
To approach such a formidable topic we must first 
face the problem presented; must understand its 
scope and its meaning. Fundamental in any con¬ 
sideration of this subject is the question of how large 
a part of the citizenship of the country has had any 
formal education at all; that is, how far do our schools 
actually reach the population of school age of the 
United States? 

It was a very disagreeable shock to most Ameri¬ 
cans to read the figures about illiteracy in the 
National Army, a shock tempered only in part by 
the explanation that they were based on inability 
to read and write the English language. It would 
perhaps be an equally severe shock to the average 
taxpayer, who has become accustomed to lavish 
expenditures for schools, to realize how very large is 
the number of people who manage to avoid even the 
merest rudiments of formal education, either by direct 

1 An address at the Educational Congress, Albany, May, 1919. 

3 School and Society , vol. XI, no. 262, pp. 1-10, January 2,1920. 

226 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 227 


escape from all schooling, or by dropping out after 
a few terms. Despite our compulsory school laws, 
and despite child-labor laws, it is a matter of common 
knowledge to all schoolmen that there is a steady 
dropping away after the earlier years. To this 
we have become so accustomed that we ordi¬ 
narily take the facts for granted, and fail to 
realize their significance to society. Masses of our 
citizenship have had but a few terms in school and 
other masses have escaped formal education alto¬ 
gether. It is perhaps not too much to say that the 
average American citizen—to say nothing of the 
notoriously illiterate mass of foreign-born dwelling 
among us—has had so little schooling that it has 
formed a minor part of his education. 

What has educated the unschooled or the partly- 
schooled? It is of course silly to deny that they 
have had an education—every adult human being 
has had one. Primarily, of course, it has been their 
contact with their kind, their social life which has 
trained them. And this is, equally of course, true 
of even the most highly developed product of the 
schools. President Wilson once remarked at Prince¬ 
ton—and it was one of his most profound observa¬ 
tions on college life—that there was fully as much 
education going on in the college between four in 
the afternoon, when the classes closed, and eight in 
the morning, when they began, as between eight and 


228 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 


four. The home is the primary center of early educa¬ 
tion—and its efficiency is said to be sadly weakened 
of late years. But by bitter necessity, his occupation, 
his business, is the chief agent in the education the 
average mortal secures. I need not labor the prop¬ 
osition—it is so true and so patent that most pro¬ 
fessional educators never see it at all. It is the 
struggle of wits in the earning of daily bread that 
educates in the truest and most effective sense the 
ordinary man or woman. 

Important factors in average education are the 
various occupations of such leisure hours as come to 
most folk. Whether it is a game of pool, or atten¬ 
dance on a baseball game, some form of sport en¬ 
joyed either as a witness or as a partaker, dancing, 
cards, a social smoke, the theater, the movies, or 
what not—recreation and amusement have their 
share in educating us. A very large share it is, 
too, and it is likely to become larger with that short¬ 
ening of the working day which seems inevitable. 
The church has a part in education, to some extent 
a formal part in teaching, as well as in service, 
sermon, and social ministration. Clubs of all sorts, 
associations, unions, societies, have their share. Man 
is molded by other men in his work and in his play, 
fs? And then there is print: not books merely, but 
all printed things. Newspapers first—and for many, 
many thousands last also, and all the time! Trade- 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 229 


papers, too, and pamphlets and posters. The 
number of newspaper readers in these United States 
must, it would seem, include every one who can 
read. The number of journals is legion. They all 
have their share in the education—such as it is— 
which our average man gets. And the weeklies! 
Not alone the ubiquitous Post which is read by per¬ 
haps one twentieth of our population each week, but 
scores of others, from the county newspapers to the 
obscurest trade-journal. Then there are the monthly 
magazines—many of them very cheap, and, I fear 
you would say, nasty also. We are the most news- 
papered and magazined nation on earth, I suppose, 
although I never dared get into the class of statis¬ 
ticians—you know their reputation. And last— 
and very much least, so far as effect on our masses 
goes—there are books. A hundred men read news¬ 
papers every day of their lives for one who reads a 
book even occasionally. Thus are the unschooled 
educated by their kind and by print. 

May I interject a word at this point? The educa¬ 
tion thus achieved is by no means necessarily bad. 
It is merely imperfect and inadequate. No matter 
how much schooling a man has had, he will not 
escape education by his fellows and by the news¬ 
papers. He will, let us hope, supplement both by 
wisdom gained from books and teachers. 

As the years go on, and as our schools grow, more 


230 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

persons in proportion to the whole mass will have 
had formal training in a high school. And yet their 
number is both actually and relatively small at the 
present day. It is notorious that attendance on the 
early years of high school greatly outnumbers that 
in the later years, while the graduates generally form 
but a fraction of the number entering. Looking at 
secondary education from any advanced or even 
from a general viewpoint, its results seem rather 
slim and meager, particularly for those who have 
no further schooling. It may well be questioned 
whether the adolescent of eighteen leaving high school 
has any very profound knowledge or unusual equip¬ 
ment. He is, however, far more susceptible to the 
influence of print and of the higher forms of amuse¬ 
ment than is the youth of the same age who lacks 
his training. To him books, in particular, make a 
direct appeal, however shallow his judgments on 
them. As a rule most high-school students have 
come into active contact with one or more foreign 
languages. This means far more to their education 
than is often apparent to the critics of curricula. 
Whatever may be the sum total of the effect of the 
study of foreign languages, there is slight question 
that it broadens in a peculiar way the mental horizon 
of the student. Such study awakens him to the 
existence of other literatures as the reading of the 
vernacular ordinarily does not. Most high-school 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 231 


students get some instruction in history—and they 
all in these days are put through several years of 
what is known as “English.” They are not made 
competent critics of the great problems of life and 
thought by their high-school training; they are 
given the means to read widely and to base their 
conclusions on at least wider data than newspapers 
alone afford. 

Then there is a small, a very small, percentage of 
our population who have had a collegiate, professional 
or technical education. This percentage is slowly 
but surely increasing, and is ordinarily, of course, 
regarded by teachers and professional “educators” as 
a leaven destined to raise popular taste and to form 
the opinions of the multitude. Thanks largely to 
our state universities and our city colleges our college 
graduates do not come from the homes of the wealthy 
and the urban middle class alone, but represent to 
an ever increasing degree the homes of farmers and 
of wage-earners as well. There is small question 
in my mind that it is his receptivity to new ideas 
which chiefly distinguishes the college graduate from 
his fellows—and particularly to new ideas meeting 
him through the medium of print. A student well 
trained in the liberal arts is notoriously likely to be 
more proficient in professional and technical studies 
than one versed only in the elements of such studies— 
largely, it would seem, by reason of his familiarity 


232 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

with books and printed things and his agility re¬ 
sulting from a variety of mental exercises. Toward 
books at least such products of the college and tech¬ 
nical schools are likely to be at once friendly, ac¬ 
customed, easy—and yet discriminating. There is 
no mystery about the printed page which rouses 
either undue reverence or instinctive distrust. Your 
college man has seen too much of the manufacturing 
of such stuff. 

We have then—as regards the results of formal 
education, schooling, or whatever we should call it— 
a mass of partly lettered folk, a slightly smaller 
mass of what that peppery Irishman, Richard 
Stanyhurst, so aptly termed “meanly lettered,” 
and a small number of better-trained minds. All 
of them in our democracy vote on an equality. As 
a matter of fact, those whom the world’s work has 
educated to leadership come largely—but by no 
means wholly, as commencement orators would 
have us believe—from the smaller group whose 
formal training has been long and thorough. What 
is the attitude of the whole toward print—particu¬ 
larly toward books? The answer to that question 
establishes the present, and to a great degree the 
future, status of the people’s library in our com¬ 
munities. 

Supposing that practically all our people can read 
—save that per cent whose eyes are holden by lack 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 233 


of teaching —what do they read? As I said above, 
they read journals, newspapers, magazines—and a 
very few books. The laws, postal and economic, 
make for the publication of periodicals of all sorts. 
They are distinctly the present-day mode, whether 
in publishing the results of the most recondite scien¬ 
tific research or in reporting baseball games. The 
trades and occupations too have their journals, 
frequently half a dozen to each calling. Look over 
any news-stand and for once note the magazine 
titles, particularly of those you never read or think 
of reading. Compare notes with any grocer or 
barber or clothier or bricklayer. They all with one 
accord will tell you that they read their own trade 
papers. From the labor union to the Society of 
Mechanical Engineers, every organization issues a 
weekly, monthly or quarterly paper. Moreover, 
the pamphlet which in the eighteenth century outran 
the newspapers in popularity—thanks largely to 
the stamp-tax—has again come into its own. I 
have no means of compiling figures on the production 
of pamphlets in the civilized world in the last five 
years, but I can bear witness—as can every librarian 
—to the marvelous number produced by the war 
and its varied phases of propaganda. They must 
have reached literally hundreds of thousands of 
titles in Western Europe and North America alone. 
And they are read by thousands to whom— 


234 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

seemingly—a bound book is anathema. But good 
newspapers—really great newspapers—are becoming 
less and less common. The morning press is before 
our eyes slowly passing away under the daily 
assaults of the cheap evening paper, run essen¬ 
tially to sell advertising and for no other end. 
Commercial journalism is a highly profitable busi¬ 
ness, and the purveying of real news is one of its 
slightest concerns—at least, so it seems to an ob¬ 
server, prejudiced, no doubt, because always in 
search of real news, the happenings of the whole 
world. Despite the destruction of huge forests 
yearly to furnish the pulp-paper for these countless 
editions, it is to be doubted whether we have any 
dissemination of accurate information at all com¬ 
mensurate to the waste of trees. But we all read— 
and buy! Doubtless we shall continue to follow 
this river of text in an ever-widening margin of ad¬ 
vertising to the end of our days—or until the river 
runs out entirely. 

I do not exaggerate this paucity of news. If there 
is anything on which the American people should 
have had abundant and accurate information during 
the years 1918 and 1919, it is on events and condi¬ 
tions in Eastern and Central Europe. But we all 
know how little we have had of real information. 
I don’t know, you don’t know, what has actually 
been going on in Warsaw and Moscow and Budapest, 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 235 


in Sofia and Odessa and Constantinople, since the 
armistice was signed in last November! Those 
little papers published weekly in Russian and Polish 
and Bohemian in certain small cities and towns in 
our country have carried pages of real letters and 
news accounts, I am told; but not so even our great 
metropolitan dailies. We have been fed with fan¬ 
tastic stores from one side or the other, each more 
lurid than the other—but what are the facts? Cer¬ 
tainly they are not found in our ordinary journals. 
In truth it is only in our libraries—and then only when 
they are conducted on progressive lines—that a man 
(not possessed of abundant means) can get at the 
real news of the day. Here he can find papers of 
varying shades of opinion and belief. Here he can 
read pamphlets and journals which the man in the 
street necessarily misses. Here he can correct the 
omissions of the local or the metropolitan press. He 
can—if he will—inform himself. He can not at the 
club or in the train or in his home back of the stock- 
yards. 

But he can do none of these things if the librarians 
have not been awake to the news situation. If they 
have not understood the difficulties, and if their 
boards of trustees have failed to back them up in 
providing the unusual journals and the less common 
papers. Not alone the ordinary run of magazines 
and papers which are found in the homes of culti- 


236 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 


vated people, but the new, the unusual, the foreign, 
should be in even moderate-sized public libraries, 
if they are to fulfill their function of supplying infor¬ 
mation and real news to the people who support 
them. 

Did you ever stop to consider the relation between 
the modern apartment which has no room for book¬ 
shelves, the modern house too small for our fathers’ 
copious black-walnut book-cases, and the gradual 
decay of the book-store in the United States? Do 
you ever ask yourself what sort of books children 
grow up with now-a-days? Did you ever—as many 
a children’s librarian has done—try to find out what 
books are actually owned in the homes from w T hich 
the school children come? If you did, I am sure you 
have been appalled at the paucity of books—the actual 
dearth of books you have supposed every one knew 
by sight at least. The Bible is still the world’s best 
seller—but there are thousands of homes, American 
homes at that, without one. In fact there are 
thousands of homes in our land without any books 
except mail-order catalogues and text-books which 
the children bring back from school. 

And did you ever seriously stop to inquire as to the 
sort of books children ordinarily see in small news- 
shops? Go into any city or town and make a list of the 
titles of the books in the windows of the little stores 
where tobacco, candy, “notions,” and cheap books 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 237 


crowd one another. I made a study of the books ex¬ 
posed for sale on West Madison Street in Chicago 
twenty-five years ago. It was a revelation to me. 
And only the other day in Buffalo I walked up from 
the station to the Public Library, and incidentally in¬ 
spected the windows of two shops. Well, I found 
that the public taste had not altered very much! 
Jesse James and the Younger Brothers were still 
there, in a trifle more attractive guise. Instead of 
“Scarlet Sin” and other equally startling and fetch¬ 
ing titles (with crude cover illustrations of the nude!) 
there was a sheet calling itself as a sub-title 
“America’s most spicy sex-magazine.” The dime 
novel of my boyhood (by no means all bad, far from 
it!) had been changed only in outward form and the 
aeroplane and motor substituted for the hero’s or the 
villain’s dashing steed. Yes-—the children of the 
poor have an alluring set of titles offered them daily. 
It is a wonder that the children’s rooms in the library 
make any headway against this display—and really 
the fact that the children throng to them seems to 
me a tribute to the essential soundness of boy and 
girl nature. 

And did you ever try to buy a book in one of our 
very small towns or villages? How often have I 
endeavored to find something even passable in the 
little, fly-specked group in the local drug-store. 
The last time I was marooned in a village for twenty- 


238 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

four hours I could only discover the Detective Story 
Magazine , having, I must confess, already read 
that week’s Saturday Evening Post . By the way, 
the most interesting part of said Detective Magazine 
was the half dozen pages of advertisements—mainly 
for news of persons who had disappeared and never 
communicated with their families. But what is a 
mere annoyance to the passing stranger must repre¬ 
sent a serious difficulty to the residents. Books 
are now sold in large numbers by the mail-order 
houses, but there are good book-stores in too few of 
our towns and villages. The department stores 
have well-nigh driven the retail book-sellers out of 
business in the cities. The fact is that our popula¬ 
tion—despite the enormous number of periodicals— 
is coming to be more and more dependent on libraries 
for even a sight of good books, to say nothing of the 
chance to read them. I offer no explanation of 
these conditions. I merely call your attention to 
the facts. On libraries lies the responsibility of 
furnishing printed matter other than the sheet 
bought for a cent or two and discarded in the street¬ 
car on the way home from work. Post-school 
education so far as it is to be got from books, is 
likely for nine-tenths of our people to be got from 
books in libraries. Private libraries are few and 
small outside of a select number of homes. Book¬ 
stores are fewer year by year despite heroic efforts 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 239 


of booksellers and publishers. Libraries are more 
than an agent in conserving and advancing the 
results of formal school instruction; they are in 
most cases the agent, the only one possible for the 
average young man or woman seeking further knowl¬ 
edge from books. 

But no such statement as this—however positively 
made—gets very far. Unless people acquire early 
in life the habit of using libraries in an efficient and 
comfortable way, there is little chance of the library 
aiding very much in conserving the results of school¬ 
ing. The chief task of librarians at the present day 
appears to be that of overcoming the indifference of 
the community to their wares—and the inertia re¬ 
sulting from that indifference. It is a rare child 
who says to himself on graduating from school: 
“Now I must keep what I have won. I’ll go regu¬ 
larly to the library and read three nights a week.” 
Unless the library has established direct contact 
with school children, contact apart from school 
work as well as in it, it is vain to expect much use 
from the child released from the bondage of school 
duties to the greater servitude of daily labor. It 
is vitally important, if the results of education are 
to be conserved, that both librarians and teachers 
realize the need of cultivating the habitual and 
voluntary use of the library by children. If as a 
permanent result of schooling and of the persistent 


240 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

and intelligent effort of children’s librarians, there is 
formed the habit of turning to the library for help 
in work and for recreation, then the results of school 
training are without doubt in a fair way to be not 
only kept, but deepened and strengthened. 

If this contact is lost, it devolves on the librarian 
to restore it. Planning for such contact is one of 
the chief duties of a librarian—a duty too often 
overlooked. No matter how excellent the library 
on the technical side, if it stands unused and empty, 
if young people do not seek it of their own accord, 
then it is a poorly managed library. I shall not 
weary you with advice nor describe the subtle and 
and effective methods of advertising now coming 
into vogue. Window-displays in stores and in the 
library building, efforts to seize current interest in 
various topics and to turn people to books about 
them; all these things are but aids toward making 
the contact between people and books. It is the 
librarian’s chief problem. He is gradually learning 
ways of meeting it, but he should surely begin with 
school-children and hope never to lose them from his 
roll of clients. Such other aids to the creation and 
maintenance of this contact as are in vogue, lectures, 
story-hours, and the like, may well serve his purpose. 
But it is the conscious study of this problem as his 
chief business which will most surely win the results 
aimed at. Each community, each group in the 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 241 


community, presents a different phase of this ab¬ 
sorbing task. Bringing people and books together 
in the right way and at the right time is, must al¬ 
ways be, the librarian’s largest work. And on his 
success to a great degree depends the conserving of 
the results of school training. 

But if the problem be vital not alone to the success 
of libraries, but to that of civilization, no less vital 
is a clear conception of what is aimed at and hoped 
for in promoting the reading habit beyond the school 
experience. The most precious fruits of education, 
those which most of all require care and help for 
their persistence, their preservation, are those ideals 
of conduct and those standards of taste which 
teachers have striven to instill. Not geometrical 
theorems or algebraic formulae remain in the memory 
and become part of the mental fiber of a youth 
versed in mathematics—but a residuum of study 
which recognizes the necessity for logical demon¬ 
stration and for exact reasoning and reckoning. 
The things of the spirit are the highest product of 
formal education. Their conservation is more im¬ 
perative a duty, more honorable a care intrusted to 
our libraries than the purveying of business infor¬ 
mation or of recipes for cooking jam tarts. No 
agency is more potent in this preservation of ideals 
than certain types of books. Poetry and the drama 
above all serve this purpose. We respond to their 


242 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

appeal to our generosity, our loftiness of purpose, 
our imagination, our moral sense. They take us 
out of ourselves for the time. That katharsis which 
so impressed Aristotle as the supreme function of 
poetry is still its great apology. We are purged of 
the dross of self and gain and strife while we rise 
to the heights of the poet’s fancy, or follow breath¬ 
lessly the rapid movement of dramatic action. And 
to poetry and drama the modern age has added the 
story, the supreme vehicle for conveying the message 
of the great artist, the great teacher. Than these 
three there are no greater or worthier means of 
keeping alive lofty idealism, high purpose, serene 
temper. 

In fact in this day the civic and educational value 
of recreative reading seems to be slightly obscured 
in favor of supposedly practical and informational 
books. But on a little reflection any one of us must 
admit that there are few influences more pregnant 
with possibilities of high results than recreational 
reading. By every means should it be encouraged 
by librarians; instead of which we find them pointing 
with pride to its decrease. Eighty per cent of fiction 
circulated is generally a lamented and decried item 
in an annual report. But to me it is properly an 
occasion for congratulation, for pride. If the fiction 
be good, wholesome stuff, rattling good stories, 
exciting and interesting novels, purposeful, artistic 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 243 


studies of real life, then the more of it read, the 
better. I would rather my boy would read a good 
story than spend the same time in a pool-room. 
I would rather read a good story myself than write 
papers for educational congresses. And I would 
be far prouder to think that I had introduced a 
community to such clean and wholesome books as, 
for instance, Back Home , The Prodigal Judge , A 
Certain Rich Man , Gold —not to mention hundreds 
of others—than to know that I had helped some 
scores of people to information of passing moment 
and interest. The scholar does not decry recrea¬ 
tional reading. He rather recalls Cicero’s noble 
words in the Oration for Archias on the worth of 
humane letters, their constant companionship in 
duress and in joy, their comfort and their permanence. 
He recalls Dante’s eulogy on Vergil—and he knows 
from his own life, what the recreation afforded by 
works of the imagination means to him. Denun¬ 
ciation of fiction reading is really crass Philistinism. 
The guiding of choice in fiction is a precious privilege 
granted to librarians. And in exercising it they 
must not forget the stern competition which they 
run with the shop window stories and with every 
other form of amusement. 

One of the most successful aids to holding children 
to a habit of reading is the keeping up of the interest 
in some subject which has attracted them in their 


244 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

school days. It is a poor boy or girl who develops 
no hobby in school life—at least who does not get 
started on the way to make a hobby out of an in¬ 
terest. His schooling may or may not advance 
him very far on that road. But the library can 
frequently give him the opportunity which the 
school can not. To the end of keeping alive an 
interest already aroused, the library and the school 
should be in close touch. The librarian should have 
the means of letting pupils know that there are 
scores, hundreds, even thousands of books on sub¬ 
jects which they first meet in class. For example, 
the geography classes open up the whole fascinating 
array of books on travel in the library. An exhibit 
in the school, or a visit of a class to the library may 
reveal to students possibilities of reading which 
will hold their attention and draw them to the 
library for years. Wherever there is a boy or girl 
genuinely interested in something on which books 
are written, there is a chance for the librarian to 
conserve—yes, to advance—the results of formal 
study. It is perfectly proper for him to buy books 
for the express purpose of promoting and keeping 
interest in some subject which has originated in the 
school. It is perfectly legitimate and indeed highly 
advisable to conserve clients to the library by keeping 
up human interest in all manner of topics—even 
when interest develops into that sort of hobby which 
makes life uncomfortable for the neighbors. 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 245 


It is a proper thing also for the librarian to try 
hard to serve that smaller class which has received 
higher education. Most of us have stretched funds 
to the utmost to do it. But too few of the librarians 
of the smaller towns and cities have understood 
how easily by means of the inter-library loan they 
may serve people whose needs are so special and 
so advanced that they far outrun the meager re¬ 
sources of small libraries. A librarian who is alive 
to the possibilities of borrowing unusual books for 
an unusual need, who knows the resources in books of 
the larger libraries, is a veritable blessing to the 
scholar isolated by occupation or need in an out- 
of-the-way place. To him such a librarian brings— 
at too high a charge as yet—the resources of the 
whole country. In fact practically everything is 
available by means of photoduplication—only the 
process costs a good bit. We shall yet get that 
cost down to a trifle, and then a librarian will have an 
agency of tremendous power in conserving his clientele 
and in serving his town. Service to business is on 
much the same footing. It can and should be given— 
but too few are able to give it. The small town or 
small city library will fulfill its educational function 
only when it pays a living salary to a live librarian. 

Were the educational function of the library con¬ 
fined to conserving the results both spiritual and 
intellectual of formal schooling, it would have ample 


246 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

justification for its existence, even aside from its 
services of another sort. But fortunately the li¬ 
brary’s work in advancing the results of formal 
education is equally patent, although necessarily 
such work appeals to a smaller group. What this 
group lacks in number, however, it gains in definite¬ 
ness. Vague problems, vaguely felt, are seldom 
well solved. But when we face very definite and 
particular needs, we generally make some measure of 
advance in meeting them. Such a need is found in 
the present efforts to establish continuation schools 
of various sorts. With the work of these schools 
you are perforce more familiar than I. You know 
how far they are vocational, how far they are ele¬ 
mentary, how far advanced. But unless I miss 
my guess there are none of them which could not 
profit by close contact with the public library. The 
library can and should aid the instruction with 
books. It can easily provide (either at the school 
or in its own quarters) books both directly helpful in 
the instruction given and those leading on to further 
study. Night-schools and continuation schools offer 
a ripe field for the library’s cooperation—a field 
perhaps as yet too much neglected. 

There is pressing need in this country for Ameri¬ 
canization work, for unfolding in a sympathetic 
manner the history, the government, the spirit of 
America to its foreign population. About this need 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 247 


and this movement also you are doubtless better 
informed than I. May I say, in passing, that it is 
my conviction that so-called Americanization will 
succeed just so far as it is done in a friendly, neigh¬ 
borly, sympathetic way? If we say to these folk— 
“Forget all you are and have been! Become like us! 
Be Americans!” we are not likely to win them to 
that spirit of democracy which we hold as our 
choicest possession. But if we lead them to know 
our ideals, to understand our ways, to comprehend 
their rights and duties as part of our body politic, 
if in short, we try to have them keep the best of their 
own past and take on our own spirit as well, we may 
have some hope of success. And the public library 
can do—is doing—much to aid. It can assist in 
direct instruction and can furnish much material 
in addition. There are few avenues of its work so 
promising of results, so well worth following. If 
we do our duty by continuation schools and Ameri¬ 
canization work we shall surely justify our claims 
to recognition as an essential agent in popular 
education. 

But not alone in these formal classes is popular 
education carried on. Few people realize the extent 
to which the American people are organized into 
clubs and societies. If you will but cast up your 
own bills for annual dues of one sort and another 
and will then multiply them by some such figure 


248 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

as one hundred million, you will begin to have some 
notion of how far we are grouped into social units. 
Not all clubs offer a field for the library’s work. 
But it is wholly incorrect to suppose that the women’s 
clubs alone read papers and use books to get them 
up. In any community, urban or rural, there are 
literally scores of clubs which might find books and 
periodicals of great assistance in their work. It 
is the librarian’s privilege and duty to seek these 
out and to minister to their needs—of course with 
tact and understanding. They have a right to his 
services, and by those services the results of school 
training may well be advanced. The fact that the 
women’s clubs have discovered the library is no 
reason why they should capture it. The same sort 
of service—rendered frequently in a different way— 
may be given to a great variety of other organiza¬ 
tions. And thereby the library furthers popular 
education in a definite way, instead of shooting in 
the air. 

Perhaps the strangest gap in the corporate rela¬ 
tions of our public libraries has been their almost 
total failure to get into touch with labor unions. 
To ignore the unions in the present age is to cut 
ourselves off from one of the strongest and most 
vital forces moving in our social cosmos. As indi¬ 
viduals many thousand union members make use 
of their libraries. And I have known some few 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 249 


librarians who have succeeded in keeping in active 
and efficient touch with the unions as such. Labor 
is undoubtedly going to secure a shorter working 
day than has been customary. Those hours re¬ 
leased from toil must be spent somewhere. Need I 
say more? Is not the librarian’s duty and privilege 
plain in that very statement by itself? And is any 
duty more imperative than that of winning and 
holding to the reading habit the men of our land? 
It is not going to be done by the methods or the 
books which have been most in vogue among us. 
But it needs to be done—and that right soon. 

And then there is the real student who is trying 
to keep up his studies—frequently amid the cares 
of his business or profession. In these days when 
so much of the world’s discussion of science and 
the arts is produced in journals, the plight of the 
student lacking access to such journals is frequently 
pitiable. He can seldom buy more than a fraction 
of what he needs. He must depend on the library 
to aid him. And generally the librarian is forced 
to regard him as but one unit demanding much for 
his own use as against some thousands demanding 
little. But I appeal to the good sense of librarians 
and to their intelligence in urging them not to forget 
their duty toward scholarship. The high-school 
teacher trying to keep up his university work in 
physics or biology or Greek or history deserves our 


250 LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 

special aid and consideration. The young chemist 
in the big industrial plant, the young doctor with a 
a special interest, the lawyer working up a line he 
began in law school, the clergyman yet intent on 
some phase of his reading despite the calls on his 
time and his sympathies, the boy in the shops who 
digs away at Spanish—these are our rare and special 
clients. If we retain the spirit of the humanists, 
if we are true to the traditions of librarianship, we 
shall sacrifice much to aid such as these. We shall 
beg and borrow and buy for them. And we shall 
be of some little service, perchance, to the advance¬ 
ment of true learning. 

There has come a great change in our library 
work. We librarians are convinced that we serve 
all the people—not a part alone, as most folk have 
supposed. We are trying to survey the whole field 
of our work—to understand our towns and cities 
and the countryside as well. We are studying them, 
charting the possibilities. We believe that we can 
make books useful and helpful to many people who 
seldom think of them. We are ready to cooperate 
with business and with labor, with schools and clubs 
and churches and homes. We serve all—and chiefly 
do we serve education, organized and individual. 
But no longer are we content to serve vaguely, in¬ 
definitely, hoping that we may somehow do good. 
We are striving for the actual, the concrete in service, 


LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION 251 


and we are reaching our aim more and more surely 
each year. Thus—and thus only—shall we suc¬ 
ceed by the very definiteness of our aim and of our 
labors in conserving and in advancing the results 
of school training. 


THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 
AT THE CROSSROADS 1 


It is inevitable that we should recall tonight the 
amazing change in world conditions from the situa¬ 
tion at the time of our last annual conference. Then 
the darkest days of the great war had indeed passed, 
though none of us could know for a certainty that 
the tide of German attack pressing on toward Paris 
had truly ebbed. The courageous and of a truth 
supremely daring offensive already launched by 
Marshal Foch in mid-June had just begun to put 
hope into the hearts of the allied peoples, stunned 
by the constantly widening and steadily renewed 
German offensives of the spring of 1918. The 
great days of Chateau-Thierry and the second 
Marne were those on which we met at Saratoga— 
anxious days on which our minds continually re¬ 
verted to France and refused to concentrate even on 
problems of the library war service. We were more 
eager for the latest newspaper than for advice, in¬ 
spiration, discussion on themes ordinarily absorbing 
to us. We adjourned just as the Germans were 

1 President’s address at the Forty-first Annual Conference of the 
American Library Association, Asbury Park, N. J., June 23-27, 
1919. 


252 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


253 


definitely driven across the Marne for the second 
time. And we adjourned confident (though no 
man ventured to say what he thought) that July 
of the next year would see us still struggling to end 
the business and to finish our share of the supreme 
task of western civilization—the final defeat of 
Germany and her allies! Indeed, so fearful were 
we, and rightly, that sterner sacrifices would be 
demanded of us, that we passed a resolution em¬ 
powering our Executive Board to postpone this 
annual meeting, if the public emergency should be 
such that conventions and conferences would prove 
undesirable. 

How different the national and international 
atmosphere today! The war won in November— 
our men returning as rapidly as they were ferried 
across the ocean—industry and agriculture resuming 
their wonted courses—problems of details of read¬ 
justment agitating nations and individuals the 
Peace Congress almost over—a league of nations 
almost an actuality—disarmament going on the 
world over—and stricken humanity endeavoring to 
bind up its wounds and to console its broken-hearted. 
The note of our meeting today is necessarily one of 
triumph and jubilation. We are not forgetful of the 
problems of peace, many of them as ugly as those of 
war (or so they seem to our still taut nerves). But 
after all the war is behind us. We are living through 


254 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


a period of rapid change, and our foes, if foes there 
be, are at least likely to be those of our own house¬ 
hold. We doubtless have enormously difficult days 
ahead of us, but happily our own land has been spared 
the sorrows that have afflicted our noble French and 
Belgian allies, and we are materially and morally 
less stricken by war, less worn and weary, more 
able to face the future with smiling confidence, 
resting assured that the American spirit which 
brought us through war will still carry us on to a 
larger life and a greater service in peace. 

And so we meet again after a year to take up with 
renewed zest and energy those problems of our work 
which we are accustomed to attack in our annual 
gatherings. And yet we are none of us quite the 
same as we were in 1917 or 1916. Our work, while 
still “the trivial round and common task,” is not 
done, can not be done, in exactly the same spirit as 
of old. We have dreamed dreams and seen visions, 
and we are turning to the future of our own library 
service with a profound conviction that it is service 
—public service of the highest type. To that end 
we are met, to consider our war service and to render 
an account of our stewardship in that branch of our 
labors; to transact our routine business and to hear 
and discuss reports of our committees; but chiefly 
to survey our own capacities, and to talk over the 
possibilities of the near future. This is a forward- 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


255 


looking conference. No other could be held by- 
progressive Americans in this year of grace 1919. 

In planning the papers for this series of meetings 
your Program Committee has had in mind just three 
purposes. First, we have felt that we should em¬ 
phasize and make of practical import our committee 
reports. Too frequently these have been perfunc¬ 
tory and have received but little discussion. So far 
as possible these reports have been printed in ad¬ 
vance, and, instead of being read in full, will be 
presented in summary only in order to leave time for 
discussion. They represent much work on the part 
of the committees, and I bespeak for them your interest 
and your comment. 

The most important—certainly the most interest¬ 
ing report—is likely to be that of the War Service 
Committee, which is now before you in printed form. 
Naturally the war service looms large in our eyes, 
and we have devoted to it no small share of our 
general program. One of the natural consequences 
of that service—or at least what we librarians feel 
should be one of its results—is the establishment of 
similar service on a permanent basis for the Army 
and Navy. We are most fortunate in the presence 
of very distinguished representatives of both branches 
of the service to speak upon this topic. 

Our second theme is a statement of certain pres¬ 
ent day conditions in our American libraries. We 


256 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


should have been glad to devote the major part of 
our time to this purpose of setting forth our condi- 
ditions and resources. A few sample topics of 
necessity have to suffice us. But we present a 
preliminary report on plans for a complete survey, 
plans to which I shall revert later. 

Finally we look to the immediate future. Here 
again we can offer but certain phases of a complete 
forecast. But we have tried, as I said a moment 
since, to make this a forward-looking meeting, even 
if necessarily our topics are but a selection from many. 
Things historical—save of our war service—things 
theoretical, things technical, we have tried for this 
occasion at least to avoid. 

It has seemed to me peculiarly fitting that the 
president of the Association should at this time 
review the work of this body and perhaps endeavor 
to show certain possibilities which have revealed 
themselves to him in the course of his term of office. 
I do not apologize for speaking to the American 
Library Association about the American Library 
Association. It does seem that we may well spare 
the time and strength to confer a little about our 
own affairs and our means of doing business col¬ 
lectively, in the interests of librarianship and of 
American libraries. 

At the Niagara Falls Conference in 1903, Mr. 
J. N. Larned, then retired from active public ser- 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


257 


vice though by no means from active work, spoke 
very convincingly of the life of this Association as a 
body. He said to a little group of younger people, 
what he later repeated on the platform before the 
Association as a whole, that coming back after an 
interval of several years he was conscious of the 
fact that the American Library Association had a 
life, an organism, apart from the individuals who 
composed it. “I feel it,” said he, “it is almost 
palpable; it exists, it influences you and me. We 
can not escape it, it forms us, and yet we form it.” 
How true these words were the experience of fifteen 
years has proved again and again. The Associa¬ 
tion has a vigor, a power, an influence of which we 
are perhaps but dimly conscious. That power and 
influence has worked hitherto chiefly on professional 
librarians. It has molded their thoughts and guided 
their actions. It has stimulated their ideals and 
has kept up their standards. It has worked largely 
as a sort of professional public opinion, functioning 
more or less well as circumstances have permitted. 
The great shock of war has, however, released an 
enormous latent energy in our Association and in 
our calling outside its ranks, for not all strong libra¬ 
rians are members of our body. We are conscious 
today of greater possibilities in library work and in 
the concerted work of librarians than we ever sensed 
in days gone by. Much of this feeling is naturally 


258 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


the result of war service. It is in every way proper, 
then, to inquire how far we have measured up to the 
opportunities the war has thrust upon us. And 
further, what are the next steps? 

To a thoughtful person it was a very significant 
thing that the United States Government through 
the Commission on Training Camp Activities applied 
to this Association to render service along strictly 
professional lines. It asked us as librarians to con¬ 
tribute our professional serivces, just as it asked the 
the doctors and the chemists to serve as doctors and 
chemists. That such a thing was possible shows 
that the value and need of the librarian’s work in 
massing, arranging, and interpreting books had at 
last gained the recognition which it deserves. No 
single fact in connection with our war service has 
more significance for us as we face the problems of 
peace than this recognition. Our war service was 
sought and was performed on the ground of our 
special fitness to give it. The history of the library 
war service has been one of steady gain in this sort 
of recognition, for the discernment of certain far- 
seeing men in Washington did not mean that their 
judgment must necessarily be final and instantly 
accepted. Nay, it was their initial wisdom which 
made possible the gradual winning by the librarians 
of a professional status in the minds of thousands of 
commanding officers, soldiers, sailors, marines. I 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


259 


believe it is now true that even the scornful and the 
doubting among the military have seen that books 
plus librarian are very different from books alone. 
And it has been no small gain for us as a profession 
that scores of our folk, mostly our younger mem¬ 
bers, have had to win their way to this esteem under 
novel and difficult circumstances. They have had 
to make good in most cases with very little prepara¬ 
tion of the way by others. How hard that task 
was, and how strenuous and unremitting the labor 
involved in setting up a new work amid adverse 
conditions, few who were not themselves engaged 
in it can understand. Long hours, obstacles in¬ 
numerable, delays, red tape, failure of books and 
of supplies, cold, wet, even lack of sleep, were the 
lot of many of our pioneers in tne war service. The 
general testimony is, however, most gratifying. 
They did make good. The exceptions were few 
enough to “prove the rule.” And as I look about 
me and see these men and women who have worn 
and are wearing our uniform, these younger folk who 
have toiled incessantly and with good spirit and 
good humor at manifold and difficult tasks, I am 
moved to no small pride and thankfulness. In the 
name of the American Library Association I salute 
you all, present and absent! We who could not 
go acknowledge to the full your sacrifice, your de¬ 
votion, your skill, your energy. We share in the 


260 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


honor reflected on our calling by your labors. The 
name librarian henceforth means something to 
millions of men because of your work. 

And to those also who planned and toiled to carry 
out this war service are due the hearty thanks of the 
American Library Association, and them also I 
salute in your name. From the very first days of 
our entrance into the war until now—two full years 
—certain officers and committee members of this 
body have been unsparing in their devotion of 
strength, time, and effort to the library war service. 
They have worked to raise money and books, have 
sacrificed time and strength to attend committee 
meetings, have neglected their own work to do this 
patriotic service, and have given themselves gener¬ 
ously in your behalf, in the name of the American 
Library Association. You know them all, and it 
would be easier, less invidious perhaps, to mention 
no names. But while recognizing that all of them 
have been devotion itself, I cannot refrain from 
stating publicly the obligations which we owe to a 
certain few. There is our secretary, Mr. George 
B. Utley, who has served as executive secretary of 
the War Service Committee, who has known no 
limit of hours for two years, and who has carried 
the greatly increased burden of his regular work in 
addition to all this war work. There is the chair¬ 
man of the War Finance Committee, Dr. Frank P. 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


261 


Hill, to whose untiring and truly heroic efforts we 
owe the raising of the first war service fund of eighteen 
hundred thousand dollars, and the second fund of 
three and a half million. There is the chairman of 
the War Service Committee, Mr. J. I. Wyer, Jr., 
who has spent his time and strength, I fear too lav¬ 
ishly, on the war service and on the work of the Com¬ 
mittee of Eleven in charge of the United War Work 
Campaign Fund. No one who has not been a part 
of that work can realize the burden he has carried, 
and the way he has carried it. There is the asso¬ 
ciate general director of the war service, Mr. Carl 
H. Milam, to whom sixteen hours a day of the 
hardest kind of work seem a pleasing measure, and 
who has carried successfully administrative burdens 
which would have laid most of us on the shelf. And 
finally, there is the general director of the War Ser¬ 
vice, Dr. Herbert Putnam, of whom I can say no 
more than that we all marvel at his capacity for 
work, his administrative skill, his foresight and his 
penetration. Volunteer work, all of it! Money 
does not, cannot, pay for the sort of labor these men 
and their colleagues—for I speak of them all equally 
with these I have ventured to name—have lavished 
on our contribution to America in her hour of need. 
It is our part not only to recognize their labors, but 
to carry on their work, to carry its spirit back to our 
offices and desks, into our reading-rooms and stacks. 


262 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


We librarians are bound to be and do more because 
of what these our colleagues have been and have 
done. 

We are bound as an Association to do more—not 
as much or less—than we did before this emergency, 
this national crisis, showed us our power to do. This 
obligation is very real and vital and comes home 
to all of us. Ju'st because the officers of the Associa¬ 
tion feel it so keenly, I have ventured to make it the 
topic for this address which our custom requires of 
each retiring president. But first in any considera¬ 
tion of our possible future activities there necessarily 
comes the question, “What sort of machinery do we 
have with which to work?” May we descend from 
thoughts of our accomplishments, and from our 
aspirations for future tasks to very practical con¬ 
siderations of our form of organization? 

* * * 

In the direction of smooth and rapid functioning 
I suggest that a simple scheme of things in which 
our Executive Board should serve virtually as a 
Board of Directors performing the work of the 
Association through committees of its own body 
would prove a signal advantage. In my judgment, 
our organization is far too complex. It should be 
simplified and made more efficient by following the 
example of business corporations. If we but detach 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


263 


ourselves from the circumstances which have pro¬ 
duced our present form of organization and view it 
from the standpoint of an efficiency engineer, we 
can see at once that it would benefit greatly by 
centralizing responsibility and authority. Some such 
process is a necessity, I believe, if we are to meet the 
demands which are pressing upon us. 

I therefore urge that you consider this matter 
very carefully at the business sessions, for I am 
convinced that until the constitution of this As¬ 
sociation permits concentration of authority and 
rapidity of action we shall never perform the work 
we ought to do. This conviction is the direct result 
of my observation in the past year when so many 
important matters have been before the officers of 
the Association. I know it is shared by many 
thoughtful persons, and I trust you will give it your 
attention. 

What are these demands of which I have just 
spoken? The chief of them all comes from ourselves. 
We have seen the splendid spirit with which our 
library folk have responded to the call for their 
services in a time of national peril. We have felt 
both pride and satisfaction in the way the American 
Library Association has been doing big things in a 
big way. On every hand I hear librarians saying, 
“We must not lose this spirit—this momentum. 
We must keep it for our peace time work. We 


264 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


need it. There must be no slackening, no slump, 
no dropping back, no disobedience to the vision.” 
Do you not meet this sort of feeling and of talk? 
I do, wherever I go. Sometimes it takes one form, 
sometimes another, but it is there, constantly and 
always, this determination not to drop back into 
mere routine, not to let slip this sense of power. 
Can we, dare we, ignore this call to continuing 
service, service as a body, not merely as individuals. 
Whatever else we do here in this week, we must not, 
feel—and I am sure you all agree with me—we must 
not assume that with the war our collective re¬ 
sponsibility ends, and we may now go back to 1917 
and take up the old threads where we left off. 

So strongly has this feeling been in the hearts of 
the officers of the Association that they felt confi¬ 
dent that you would wish, would decide, would plan 
to go on to further corporate w r ork in peace, work 
for the benefit of all libraries, and of communities 
having no libraries. To this end a library survey 
of the entire country was authorized by the Execu¬ 
tive Board in January and entrusted to a Committee 
of Five on Library Service. This committee was 
charged with the duty of setting down the actual 
conditions of American libraries today, their incomes, 
their property, their staffs, their salaries, their 
methods, their practice. It is to report here on its 
plans. How great is the need for some such state- 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


265 


ment of conditions, practice and standards, I can 
testify from repeated experiences during the past 
four months. “Can’t you give us some definite 
statement of what it would cost to run a college 
library in the right way?” That was the demand 
the Ohio College Association made on me last April. 
“What should we as trustees expect our librarian 
to do?” has been asked of me a dozen times in the 
last year. “Is our library doing well for its income?” 
is a fair question for any citizen, whether a trustee 
or not. Some norm by which we can measure our¬ 
selves, some statement of practice, of salaries, of 
methods, of training, which trustees and librarians 
can set before them as a goal, or a point of departure, 
this is what the Committee of Five will try to draw 
up. To do it properly will be most costly, but then, 
so will any other piece of good work. If we are to 
go forward, we must first know where we stand. 
This we hope the Service Committee of Five will 
tell us, and I appeal to you all to second their efforts 
in your most hearty manner. 

One of the amazing experiences of the library 
service for soldiers and sailors has been the repeated 
calls for similar service to civilians. The money 
contributed for war work has been used solely for 
war work, but it has been heart-breaking to refuse 
the many appeals for help—help which we could 
give, had we but the means. At the Council meet- 


266 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


ing, which is open to all members, some of these 
kinds of work will be brought out by persons who 
have knowledge of them. But let me say in ad¬ 
vance that we could keep an active force at work at 
headquarters doing perfectly legitimate library work 
not now being done by established agencies, had 
we the means. There is the continuing service to 
the Army and Navy, which we hope will be taken 
over by the Government; service to the merchant 
marine, now so sadly neglected, and so appealing 
in its demand; service to lighthouses and lightships, 
and to the coast guard; information and inspection 
service for communities in real need of expert advice, 
particularly in states having no library commissions; 
service to the blind, which is so costly and which so 
few local libraries are able to render effectively; 
service in organizing interlibrary loans, and thus 
making the resources of the whole country serve re¬ 
search; service in cooperative buying, in which we 
ought to bring to play for the benefit of us all the 
experience of buying for the war work; service in 
publicity which will recognize that the best publicity 
is service; service to practical bibliography, unlocking 
the treasures too frequently concealed in card cata¬ 
logs; service in preparing all manner of union lists, 
to avoid much duplication of rare sets, and much 
bidding against one another; service in aid of special 
library training; service—but I will stop; why catalog 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


267 


the various cooperative enterprises and public bene¬ 
fits in which we are eager to engage? The work is 
here and ready to our hands. The harvest needs but 
the reapers. 

But, says doubting Thomas—for he is here, many 
of him—where is the money coming from to do all 
these fine things? Where, I ask, did the millions 
of books come from? What was the source of the 
millions of magazines? Who gave us nearly five mil¬ 
lion dollars for our war work? The American people 
only have to be convinced that we have a good thing, 
to give us all the money we need. If we can’t con¬ 
vince them, then we won’t get it. But we should, 
I am sure, have a friend in every man in both ser¬ 
vices who saw our book-plate on a book he read. If 
we can believe the tales we hear and the letters that 
come in, the boys believe in us and in our work. 
If, as I believe, we have their good-will, the rest is 
easy. The money will come, but not without ask¬ 
ing, if also not for the asking. It will be your task 
at this conference, my fellow members, to decide 
whether you wish to make the venture, to ask for 
the money, to decide whether you believe enough 
in your work to try to make the American people 
believe in it. 

A word in conclusion. The emergency work of 
the past two years has been done by a happy com¬ 
bination of our experienced leaders and our younger 


268 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


men and women. If the American Library Associa¬ 
tion is to go forward, whether on the plans before 
us today or on any others, it matters not which; 
if the American Library Association is to go forward, 
it must be by the efforts of the younger generation. 
I see before me a few veterans who have been with 
the Association since its first meetings. We listened 
last year at Albany to him who was long its chief 
servant and its chief inspiration, Melvil Dewey. 
But, ladies and gentlemen, his words, prophetic as 
they were, marked the end of an epoch. The men 
of 1876 are almost all gone. The men who came into 
the work in the nineties are getting old. The war 
has shown the powers of those men and women who 
have come to us in the last two decades. To them 
belong the tasks of the near future. If ever we 
feared lest the men who should succeed Dewey and 
Winsor, Larned and Poole and Cutter, Fletcher and 
Brett, and our other pioneers should set a lower mark 
than theirs, that doubt has been dissolved by the 
last two years. Those who come after our pioneers 
are more than equal to the task. Together, if they 
will bear with the slower wits and less active bodies 
of us older men and women, we can carry the Ameri¬ 
can Library Association on to greater and nobler 
service. 

For very plainly we stand at the crossroads. Our 
war service is all but done. Six months will see the 


AT THE CROSSROADS 


269 


end of it. We can of course go lumbering on, doing 
fairly well, as of old, our accustomed tasks. Or we 
can strike out into new fields, into ways of practical 
library service that are clearly open. I am confi¬ 
dent of your choice, and more confident that we can 
not go back. We shall, I am sure, make 1919 
memorable as the year of the great decision. 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE^ 2 


One learns by adversity—at least such is the 
popular belief, although the press dispatches from 
Europe during the past few months would seem to 
give the lie to this old adage. It used to be my fate 
to encounter at frequent intervals a genial friend of 
great distinction in the field of physics and astronomy, 
long engaged in high administrative functions, an 
alumnus of this university—altogether a man of great 
weight and substance, who endeavored each time we 
met to overwhelm my cherished ambitions by bring¬ 
ing forth with great gusto this aphorism, “Biblio¬ 
graphy is the platitude of research!” So much did 
this phrase please him that he paraded it on many 
occasions, and I confess I used to dodge around the 
corner to avoid its rotund and sonorous condemnation 
of my own ways and works. I hope to show you that 
bibliography is the foundation of research, and that 
however level and flat that foundation may be, how¬ 
ever dull may be the task of laying it deep and strong, 
no lasting and lofty superstructure may safely be 
reared, save on the secure footing of a knowledge of 

Address at the annual meeting of the Michigan Chapter of 
Sigma Xi, May 26,1922. 

2 Science , vol. LVI, no. 1443, August 25,1922. 

270 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


271 


previous work done by others, a knowledge resting 
necessarily even in the field of science on the much 
despised labor of the bibliographer. 

There is prevalent on every university campus, I 
suppose, an impression—not among students alone— 
that the various branches of human knowledge are 
for practical purposes divided into two groups, the 
laboratory sciences and the book sciences. This is an 
extremely convenient and easy grouping—and it has 
certain elements of truth in its facile cleavage of the 
field of inquiry. But it is essentially inaccurate in 
that it ignores a fundamental factor common alike 
to research with the microscope or the blow-pipe 
and research with the written word or philosophic 
logic as its instrument. That factor is the record 
of what has been known and spread abroad by pre¬ 
vious inquirers. The processes of human inquiry 
depend fundamentally on memory—and in the case 
of the pursuit of knowledge in our own day on the 
record in print of what the race has done or thought 
or attempted. It makes little difference whether 
the inquiry be into the morphology of the early Italic 
dialects of the Latin tongue, or into the function of the 
ductless glands of guinea pigs—the essential processes 
are alike these: observation and the gathering of 
data by experiment or by compilation; a study of the 
previous work done in the same field with a critical 
examination both of processes and results; a synthesis 


272 


THE RECORD OE SCIENCE 


from one’s own observations and from the recorded 
observation of others; and finally such reflection 
(or theorizing) on the results as may lead to correlation 
of this piece of investigation with the sum of human 
knowledge, perhaps (occasionally) in a way to affect 
human activity. The so-called “book sciences” 
employ methods in no way essentially different from 
those long approved in the so-called “natural sci¬ 
ences.” All of them alike depend on careful study 
of previous work as an initial step and on the publica¬ 
tion of results as a final process. No facile popular 
division can separate “book-knowledge” from “ex¬ 
perimental research.” Experiment without “book- 
knowledge” is generally not research in the true 
sense, even though it occasionally leads an Edison 
into discoveries of untold value to the world. 

There is, notwithstanding, a justification for this 
distinction popular among college students. The 
manner of teaching the natural sciences has been 
completely revolutionized in the last forty years. 
Every one knows that subjects formerly taught from 
text-books are now taught chiefly in laboratories. 
Emphasis is now laid on accurate observation, correct 
inference from observation, ability to report the sum 
of observation succinctly and truthfully. An equip¬ 
ment elaborate in itself, impressive in amount and 
cost, is properly thought needful to the task of teach¬ 
ing the natural sciences. Each student is considered 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


273 


(I suppose) an embryo Pasteur or Rowland, and is 
laboriously inducted into scientific methods by re¬ 
quiring him to develop manual dexterity in the use of 
instruments, and training him to produce neat and 
correct note-books. Naturally the mass of students 
is found in the elementary courses. It is only the 
smaller number resulting from a process of natural 
(or at least academic) selection which ever gets to the 
“journal club” stage, and becomes personally aware 
of the existence of the enormous and multifarious 
record of scientific knowledge. That the method of 
teaching should of itself influence the students’ 
conception of the subject-matter of instruction is 
both natural and inevitable. That undue weight 
should be given by their elders to manner and form 
of presentation is quite another matter. It is, how¬ 
ever, impossible to escape the conclusion that many a 
scientist thinks that he is freed by the very nature of 
his work from a supposed taint of bookishness. He 
gives thanks that he is not as other men, as these 
historians and philologians—or even this librarian. 

There is a real danger lurking in this attitude; and 
we are not without evidence that (whether from this 
source or more subtle workings of the laws of auto¬ 
suggestion) this tendency to pride himself on being 
strictly a scientific and not a book man has bred a 
habitual attitude of neglect of the record side of 
scientific inquiry which has already been disastrous 


274 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


in too many instances. The conviction that ap¬ 
paratus and laboratories are essential—a perfectly 
sound and indeed a fundamental thesis—has somehow 
led to the notion that they and they alone constitute 
the requirements not only of instruction, but of re¬ 
search as well. This tendency—and I do not exag¬ 
gerate it in the least—has made too many folk un¬ 
mindful of the long history of science, has bred an 
attitude which can best be described as almost wholly 
lacking in the historic sense. And without a sense 
of the historic setting of his work, a man is almost as 
hopeless as is the man who lacks a sense of humor! 
You can not argue with one or the other! In fact 
I dare go farther and affirm that only by the combina¬ 
tion of the historical and the experimental methods can 
any work of first-rate importance be produced in any 
field of knowledge. 

By this time, I fear you may be saying to yourselves 
that whatever the platitude of research may mean as 
applied to bibliography the bibliographer is in truth 
indulging in platitudes! No one need set up a man 
of straw for the pleasure of knocking him over. 
There is no point to my contention, if it be true that 
students of the natural sciences in America have 
rigorously employed both the historical and the ex¬ 
perimental method. The great leaders have un¬ 
questionably done just that. But how many great 
leaders have we produced in America? May not one 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


275 


reason for our surpassing excellence in the practical 
arts and our rather scant array of great names in pure 
science lie exactly in the absence of the historical 
record of science from American institutions in the 
past century? It is difficult, perhaps one may say 
it is impossible, to get a correct historical perspective 
without a really good and strong library to furnish 
the means of study. No amount of second-hand 
information will ever take the place, for the real 
student, of the original documents. This is just as 
true in the pure and applied sciences as it is in history, 
economics or letters. Imagine an astronomer trying 
to carry on intelligent research in the observational 
field alone, without the great publications of the 
nineteenth century at his hand for previous study and 
occasional consultation. Yet that is precisely what 
scores of astronomers have done in this land, and are 
doing to-day. The example might be multiplied ten¬ 
fold. Really good libraries of scientific books are 
scarce enough in America to-day. Before 1870 they 
did not exist, save perhaps at Harvard, and at the 
Astor Library in New York. No one of them is yet 
fully equipped to meet all the reasonable demands of 
scientists for a record of the progress of knowledge. 
I say this from my own experience. For eight years 
I labored—too often in vain—to serve the scientists 
in the various bureaus in Washington with books they 
needed. My work was in the third largest library 


276 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


in the world. This fact is significant. May I enlarge 
upon it? 

America is not a nation alone—it is continent. 
Distances are enormous. Because Mr. Henry E. 
Huntington has in San Gabriel in California a very 
rare early English book on American fishes or plants, 
it does not follow that it is of much use to a Harvard 
student who requires the exact language of the original 
description of a particular species. The extraordinary 
collection of early botanical works in the library of 
Notre Dame University is not easily helpful to the 
botanists of the Bureau of Plant Industry. These 
are but two concrete examples of the physical size 
of this land. You know what it means to journey 
to Washington in the hot weather of summer—yet 
you must perforce make the trip in vacation to consult 
some volume found in America only in the Library 
of Congress and too rare or too fragile to permit its 
loan. The situation is quite different in Europe. 
No university in the British Isles is as far from the 
British Museum as Ann Arbor is from New York or 
Washington. Even from Aberystwyth or remoter 
Aberdeen the trip is less in time consumed than from 
here to Albany. No French university professor is so 
far in time from the Bibliotheque Nationale as we from 
our national library, and we (be it remembered) are 
much nearer than our colleagues to the west and south. 
In Germany the Prussian State Library and in Aus- 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


277 


tria the great libraries at Vienna are relatively near 
the universities. If one goes to London, it is but eight 
hours to Paris. Between the two largest libraries 
in the world a scholar can usually find all he needs in 
the way of books. I need not point out the contrast 
in this country and in Canada. These distances from 
great library centers have not been without influence 
on American scholarship. 

In fact we may safely say that up to about 1900 
there were very few strong scientific libraries in 
America, libraries in which the record of science could 
be traced with precision. There has been an almost 
startling change since the opening of this century. 
We have much yet to do. We can overcome the 
obstacles of distance and youth only by further 
heroic efforts. But we have most surely made 
progress. We have now a round dozen libraries really 
strong from an absolute standard. And they are 
growing stronger every day. We have many special 
libraries in various fields of science which have been 
highly developed in their own line—of these the most 
conspicuous is probably the great medical library of 
the Surgeon General's Office in Washington. We 
have developed library technique and library service 
far beyond European practice. But we have not de¬ 
veloped to the point where the historic sense is neces¬ 
sarily fostered and the historic instinct adequately 
satisfied. That will come with time. Meantime we 


278 


THE RECORD OE SCIENCE 


may perhaps expect that instruction will take cog¬ 
nizance of this changed situation and will by its 
pressure aid to improve further the resources in the 
way of books. 

For, of course, instruction in historic method and 
in the use of books as tools is utterly impossible 
without really good libraries. It is folly to expect 
students—even advanced students of high promise— 
to acquire a proper attitude toward their predecessors 
and their contemporaries without the publications of 
both at hand in full numbers. It is useless—or 
nearly so—to teach exact methods of ascertaining the 
present state of knowledge about any particular 
problem, when you know it is being worked on in 
New Zealand and South Africa—and your library 
lacks the New Zealand and South African transactions 
and journals. I need not dwell on this painful fact. 
You know more about it than I do. I suggest, 
therefore, that the production of truly strong men in 
your various lines of study depends to a very con¬ 
siderable degree on a sufficient provision of books in 
our libraries here on this campus. That provision 
depends on many factors—of which money is by no 
means the only one, as I hope to show you in the 
course of these remarks. 

For the publication of the results of observation 
in the field of science has taken many (and frequently 
strange) forms. We ordinarily think of books as 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


279 


just books—perhaps unconsciously influenced by the 
manufacture or the perusal of text-books. Ordinary 
monographs of the text-book type do, it is true, 
make the staple contents of book-sellers’ stocks and 
ordinary library shelves. But they are perhaps the 
least important element in the complicated record of 
science. They are too generally compilations—not 
the results of original research. And their tendency 
to accumulate on those very shelves has perhaps had 
no small part in that neglect of the historic aspect 
of scientific inquiry to which allusion has just been 
made. The large and imposing monograph is the 
exception. True, it generally remains valuable and 
“well-spoken-of” long after the smaller books have 
passed to the limbo of things with a “merely histori¬ 
cal” interest. Moreover, the huge monographs which 
have appeared in some scientific fields—such things 
as Audubon’s Birds of North America , for example, 
or the monumental publications of von Humboldt— 
have been so costly that save to a favored few they 
have been merely names and names alone. I am 
inclined to consider this costliness in relation to our 
American libraries (until a recent date) a very real 
factor in the neglect of the older literature. It has 
simply cost too much to be known by the average 
student. 

Perhaps the most extremely particularized form 
of monograph is the doctoral thesis. Most folk 


280 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


whom I have met have lost interest in theses within a 
few years after their own have been promptly for¬ 
gotten by their colleagues. It is hard to get any 
money for a lot of dissertations—particularly for the 
thin German products. The more extended French 
dissertations usually masquerade as real books. But 
historically theses for the doctorate have a great 
value—particularly those printed before 1800. Few 
people recall the pleasing habit of the earlier centuries 
which pratically compelled the candidate respondens 
to pay for the publication of the work of his prases 
under the guise of a doctoral disseration. A few 
years since a committee on botanical nomenclature— 
or rather, members of it resident in Washington— 
began to torment me for the disserations of the pupils 
of Linnaeus, which, they averred, contained some of 
the great master’s best work. It was an interesting 
quest which became exciting when I discovered a 
bundle of these much desired little Upsala disserta¬ 
tions carefully tied up and labeled among a group 
of several thousand Smithsonian exchanges from 
Sweden. By the liberal use of the photostat, re¬ 
producing copies from the Harvard Library and the 
Torrey Botanical Club, the series was made, I believe, 
complete, and the committee supplied with those 
original descriptions so essential in determining 
nomenclature. 

One of the extremely important groups which has 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


281 


been too often denied our budding scientists is that 
formed by the publications of museums the world over. 
The catalogs and series, the monographs and bulletins 
published by important museums are in a very real 
sense the foundation stones in many branches of 
science. And it is not only the great museums such 
as the British Museum, the Berlin group, the National 
Museum at Washington, the Peabody Museum at 
Cambridge, which have issued vitally important 
publications. The local and the special museums 
have issued publications both serial and monographic 
which become of vital importance the minute a piece 
of work done here demands them. You can never 
foretell when one of these will seem to some professor 
exactly the one book in the world whose absence from 
our shelves is fairly blocking his studies. He could 
not tell you himself a week before his need suddenly 
arises that he would ever care for such a report or 
catalog. But he can make his wants known without 
any difficulty when the demand comes, I assure you. 
What has seemed a fairly good library up to this morn¬ 
ing instantly changes to a very mediocre establishment 
in the afternoon after a consultation of the catalog! 
It is a great pleasure to be able to report to you that 
for five years past the income of the Octavia Bates 
Bequest has been chiefly devoted to the purchase of 
museum publications, beginning with those of the 
British Museum. We could use a permanent fund 


282 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


twice as large to very good purpose in supplementing 
this work, which up to this time has only begun. 

Museum publications are generally issued in limited 
numbers and at high prices. It is a serious task to 
secure them. But it is easy compared to the job 
of getting the publications of expeditions. There is 
a peculiar fate which attaches to the printing and 
editing of the scientific results of expeditions of all 
sorts. Usually some member publishes a popular 
narrative which frequently sells rather well, par¬ 
ticularly if any notoriety or celebrity attaches to the 
expedition. This very quickly gets into the libraries, 
as witness the host of popular accounts of polar ex¬ 
peditions which you doubtless all know by name. 
Far different is the fate of the publication of the 
scientific results. They are inevitably the work of 
different men. The labor of preparation requires 
vastly more time for some subjects than for others. 
Parts of volumes appear from time to time—members 
of the expedition go off on other expeditions with their 
first work half-done or half-published. Editors 
change, or die. A fire in a store-room or a residence 
destroys another’s notes—or even the specimens 
themselves. Years pass and the expedition’s publi¬ 
cations are still unfinished—perhaps they are never 
finished. Volumes remain unbound because of a 
missing part never issued, but still hoped for. Pub¬ 
lishers fail and the stock is sold for paper. Govern- 


THE RECORD OP SCIENCE 


283 


ments grow weary and withdraw subventions—then 
vote them again. Heaven blesses a few scientific 
expeditions with capable members, vigilant editors, 
a government’s purse and completion of publication 
within a few years. But they are few. I could tell 
you tale after tale of heart-breaking delays, incon¬ 
sistencies, changes of forms, failures, deaths—and 
all involving untold trouble for the librarian who must 
first get these things and then take care of them. 
Altogether a difficult and perhaps a useless job, you 
might say. 

But then—remember the momentous results of 
some expeditions and voyages;—yes even of some which 
have never been completely published! One need 
only recall a few names, La Perouse, The Challenger, 
the Beagle,—need we go on? Take but one ex¬ 
ample—the Wilkes Exploring Expedition. You recall 
its history, the famous controversy over the Antarctic 
Continent, the numerous narratives, the slow ap¬ 
pearance of the stately folios containing the scientific 
results. This was the first scientific publication on a 
large scale of the government of these United States, 
and an entire evening could be spent in a most inter¬ 
esting way in detailing its vicissitudes. I need men¬ 
tion only one volume to show its importance—Dana’s 
great work on the Zoophytes, a book so important 
that seventy years after its appearance it is still 
regarded as fundamental. But how few libraries 


284 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


own a copy of the original text and plates! Printed 
in only 200 copies, never sold, distributed solely by 
resolution of Congress, what chance has there been 
for the newer libraries to secure a copy for their 
clientele? To be sure, not all expeditions encounter 
such a series of accidents in publication as this of 
Wilkes—but as a class they present a most difficult 
problem. They are alike hard to get when issued, 
slow to appear, slower to be finished, costly and even 
(occasionally) not sold at all, but only given to a select 
few. Later, years later, the task is much harder. 
If I were given a round sum and told to get in three 
years all the important scientific expedition publica¬ 
tions of the past hundred years—I should decline to 
promise success in that time—perhaps even in five 
years. But I can think of but few efforts so well 
worth attempting. 

If expeditions present difficulties alike to the 
librarian and the scientist, what shall we say of inter¬ 
national congresses? That they mark the progress 
of research in many lines is a truism. They are 
absolutely needed—but they too are very hard to get. 
In the first place, there is no good list of them—even 
the brief list issued about a year ago is most incom¬ 
plete. Then, the congresses seldom have permanent 
offices and officers. They are held at irregular in¬ 
tervals, generally in a different place each time they 
meet. If one attends, he generally gets the proceed- 


THE RECORD OP SCIENCE 


285 


ings. But very seldom does any library get a notice 
of the meeting in advance. Usually the papers and 
proceedings are published in the place where the 
congress meets—at Madrid one year, three years 
later at Washington or Moscow or Stockholm, or 
where you please. The publisher of course varies 
with each move of the congress. An attempt to place 
an order for subsequent issues usually fails of execu¬ 
tion. Three or five years is a long time for any 
secretary to carry an order. So if some professor from 
Michigan goes to the geological congress at Brussels 
this summer, we may get on the mailing list—but 
otherwise we probably shall not—despite our efforts. 
The difficulty is vastly increased by the habit of 
European governments of giving subventions to private 
publishers to aid in printing reports of congresses 
instead of issuing them through the governmental 
printing office. So they may appear in the publisher’s 
list as his own publications—or they may never be , 
listed anywhere. It can not be denied that the hunt¬ 
ing down of international congresses adds zest to the 
librarian’s life—but when you are held accountable 
by science for the results of your hunting it ceases 
to be sport. Then, too, local societies and savants 
have a pleasing habit of offering volumes to the con¬ 
gress as a sort of testimony alike of their interest and 
of their own activities. These are almost never to 
be confused with the Report of the Congress itself— 


286 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


except in the minds of booksellers who manage to 
introduce no end of confusion into orders as a con¬ 
sequence. You may imagine, therefore, that inter¬ 
national congresses are a bug-bear to library folk— 
a sore topic. You may also imagine my own delight 
in securing over one hundred and fifty reports of 
various international congresses on my book-buying 
trip last fall. Few acquisitions have given me more 
solid satisfaction. And yet, I suppose I have simply 
created more trouble for myself—every department 
will now demand that these reports be made ab¬ 
solutely complete! In the language of the street, 
“I can see my finish!” Partial success always brings 
its own penalty. 

Who originated the idea of the “Academy”? Who¬ 
ever he was, whether Plato in the groves of Academe, 
or some Renaissance imitator, or even the gentleman 
who conceived the Royal Society, he let loose on 
mankind an institution making for publication—if 
we appraise it in no higher terms. And particularly 
in the nineteenth century did the academy flourish 
in print. Here again Europe has an advantage over 
America, and advantage more of age than of enter¬ 
prise, of geographical smallness as contrasted with 
continental sweep and range. Most scientists in 
Europe have easy access to files of academic publica¬ 
tions, files which have been slowly accumulated with 
the passing years. Here we have had to work hard 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


287 


in the past two decades to establish half a dozen 
centers in which fairly complete series may be found, 
a process still going on and proving increasingly 
costly each year. But we must continue and com¬ 
plete it. The interests of American scholarship 
simply require it of us. The greater academies are 
now well represented at Michigan, with here and there 
a gap, it is true, but still with full ranks for the most 
part. What to do about the minor academies and 
societies from the whole world? That is a vexing 
question to which I may refer again in a few moments. 
I pause merely to remark that a minor academy is 
minor only so long as you do not want its transac¬ 
tions in your own work. 

And last in this array of forms of scientific publica¬ 
tion comes the largest group of all, newest and most 
insistently demanded, the journals. To me the rise 
of the special periodical devoted to the interest of a 
special group is one of the most significant social 
phenomena of the past fifty years. Let no one here 
think that this tendency to periodical publication is 
confined to science or to the more learned groups. 
By no means—the brick-layer, the barber, the banker, 
the baker, the builder, the book-binder (to keep to 
one letter only) all have their journals fully as much 
as the biologist, the botanist, the biochemist, or even 
the bibliographer. And they all have to be ordered, 
entered, paid for, cataloged, bound, and stored. 


288 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


Periodical publication is the one modern form for 
telling the world what everybody has done and what 
other people think about it. We take in over twenty- 
eight hundred journals in the University Library. 
A goodly number—do you say? Well, it is just about 
half what other libraries of our size subscribe for, and 
about a quarter of what the Library of Congress 
receives each year. Perhaps the medical faculty is 
satisfied with its four hundred and sixty-six journals 
received. But I fear no other group really has 
enough. Certainly that great department loosely 
known as the social sciences does not have at hand 
here anything like an adequate supply. I see no end 
to this modern form of publication. Every quarter 
I read with sadly disappointed hope the record of 
“Births and Deaths in the Periodical World” ap¬ 
pearing in the Bulletin of Bibliography. The births 
always outnumber the deaths and the marriages of 
journals. My one consolation is my firm conviction 
that wood-pulp paper has a very definite limit of 
stability. But then I reflect that some chemist is 
sure to discover some process of preserving this wood- 
pulp mass for an indefinite period. There is no way 
out. Journals and transactions, reviews and pro¬ 
ceedings we have ever with us in ever increasing 
numbers. These the investigator simply must have. 
Can he have them all at hand currently and in bound 
form? Obviously not, unless we multiply our library 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


289 


budgets about ten-fold, and our storage quarters 
five-fold. 

This leads us very naturally to consider this problem 
of supplying the full record of science to our men of 
science. It is not a local problem merely. It is also 
a national problem. The difficulties in the way are 
partly those of finance, partly those of time, partly 
competition, not alone among American libraries, 
but with those of Japan and China, of South America 
and South Africa, of New Zealand and Australia. 
Very much of the material required by this group 
before me was published in but a small edition, run¬ 
ning from a couple of hundred in the case of certain 
very costly books, to a thousand or more for certain 
journals. In their beginnings journals and transac¬ 
tions are frequently issued in only sufficient numbers 
to meet the actual number of subscribers. You all 
know how the wastebasket yawns for odd numbers, 
and what chances of destruction stray copies must 
run between careless or absent-minded owners, 
house-maids, janitors, the frugal house-wife and the 
rag-man. Wars and disasters intervene to reduce 
the numbers of copies in existence. I have no hesita¬ 
tion in saying that the possibility of securing sets of 
certain very much valued books and journals is 
diminishing even to the vanishing point with each 
year that goes by. The world war was destructive of 
reserves, caused restriction in the number of copies 


290 


THE RECORD OE SCIENCE 


printed, and increased enormously the cost of printed 
matter of all sorts. In some cases known to me no 
copies were printed beyond the actual home demand, 
totally ignoring foreign or enemy subscribers. I 
know of one American journal which actually printed 
last December one hundred and fifty copies less than 
its regular subscription list, because paper took a 
sudden jump in price and only the stock on hand was 
used. This sort of thing makes the task of securing 
sets anything but easy. The chief source of supply 
is the libraries of deceased professors as they come on 
the market—and professors who own and bind long 
files of journals and transactions are becoming rarer 
with the high cost of living and the decreasing amount 
of shelf space in modern houses and apartments. 
The necessity of quick action can not be stressed 
unduly in view of the present circumstances. It is 
not a question any longer of waiting for a favorable 
opportunity. Rather are we faced with the necessity 
of getting what we need whenever the chance comes 
up. The competition from the newer countries and 
the newer libraries is keener every year. Thirty 
years ago there was no large scientific library west 
of us—not one. Now we may mention the Univer¬ 
sities of Chicago, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
Iowa, Nebraska, California, Leland Stanford, Wash¬ 
ington, and the John Crerar Library, without even 
exhausting the list of institutions of the first rank— 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


291 


for special libraries in a small field are equally danger¬ 
ous competitors for the valuable books and sets in 
their own line. In those same thirty years South 
America, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and Canada 
have come into the field eager to provide their scien¬ 
tists with the record of science. McGill University 
bought just before me last fall very many sets of 
journals long on our list of desiderata. I found 
Japanese buyers had been everywhere with the gov¬ 
ernment purse to draw on. The fact is that we 
must both hasten our own purchases and combine 
with our neighbors if American learning is to be kept 
on an equality with that of Europe. 

The need of cooperation and of a policy looking 
to the elimination of certain forms of competition is 
brought home to me more keenly each year. We 
should be able, it would seem, to agree on certain 
fields which we can cultivate intensively, securing 
everything of moment in them, as far as we can raise 
the funds. Certain general works, general society 
transactions, journals of a wide appeal we must all 
have. But must we—take a concrete case —all try 
to buy the publications of the smaller and less im¬ 
portant societies? May not half a dozen sets spread 
over the country suffice with the development of the 
interlibrary loan and of photo-duplicating machines? 
Can we not agree with Chicago, Urbana, Cleveland, 
Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Ithaca on a limit in 


292 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


purchasing such local society publications? Thus 
we might all save money, keep down prices, gain in 
the total number of sets available, and lend freely 
between ourselves. This matter seems to me highly 
important—even vital to our success. It has been 
much discussed among librarians. There would be 
small difficulty in arriving at a policy, if it were a 
matter to be decided by librarians alone. But it 
concerns far more deeply the faculties of the various 
universities and their governing boards. We li¬ 
brarians can not, for example, get together and agree 
on a limitation of our several fields of specialization. 
We must first gain adherents to a policy of limitation, 
then form an agreement through some joint committee 
of professors, and finally secure the consent of boards 
of regents and trustees. The facts are most clear 
and patent. We simply can not all have everything. 
There isn’t enough to go ’round, nor money enough 
to buy everything. What we must do, then, in 
common sense is to stop trying to get everything in 
each library, and go for the things we can reasonably 
expect to secure in cooperation with our neighbors. 
If any one doubts the success of this plan, I refer him 
to the results of the agreement between the Chicago 
libraries made in 1895 and carried out since to the 
lasting benefit of scholarship. There is every reason 
why we should enter into a similar pact with neigh¬ 
boring libraries. 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


293 


For what is our position now? We have no near 
neighbors among universities. We stand half-way 
between Cornell and Buffalo on the east and Chicago 
and Northwestern on the west. Western Reserve, 
Ohio State and Oberlin to the south are in a manner 
comparable with our collections—but as yet hardly 
formidable rivals. There is practically nothing north 
of us—(Remember that I am speaking now of li¬ 
braries whose chief interest is the furthering of 
scholarship). We have two large public libraries 
fairly near—Detroit and Cleveland, both owning 
certain valuable special collections, and both likely 
to specialize in technology and in the applied sci¬ 
ences. There are a few specialized libraries of dis¬ 
tinction, such as that of the Western Reserve His¬ 
torical Society at Cleveland, which owns what is 
probably the best collection on our Civil War in 
existence. We may safely say, then, that we have 
fewer neighbors on whose aid we may rely than have 
the eastern universities or those in the northern Mis¬ 
sissippi Valley. But there is no reason that I can 
see why we should attempt to duplicate and surpass, 
for example, the White Collection of Folk-lore in the 
Cleveland Public Library, or the Burton Collection 
of local history and genealogy in the Detroit Public 
Library. Nor should we fail to agree with the 
Chicago libraries and those of Ohio (and even perhaps 
of western New York and Ontario) as to certain fields 


294 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


of learning which they will leave to us, and others in 
which we shall not aim at more than general works. 
I should like to see the Association of University 
Professors, or some other body representing various 
universities, take up this problem in a practical 
fashion. The inter-library loan and the photostat put 
the resources of each library at the disposal of its 
neighbors. Why neglect so obvious a step as con¬ 
ference and agreement on subjects of specialization? 
But, of course, when it comes to self-denying or¬ 
dinances, only the men concerned may pass them. 
It is not for me to say what any group of professors 
shall forego. It is “up to” them in the interest of 
science as a whole and of its progress in our land. I 
can merely point out one very obvious step to be 
taken—and perhaps push a little towards that step. 

Our present situation here at Michigan is better 
than it was, but it is far from satisfactory. We have 
a goodly list, for example, of journals and society 
transactions—but we have far too many gaps in the 
sets, gaps that are very hard to fill. We have a fair 
lot of expedition publications—likewise badly de¬ 
fective. We have a few of the great monumental 
publications, and very incompete sets of congresses 
and museum publications. I have already indicated 
that our collections of monographs are reasonably 
large. But we are distinctly worse off in the pure 
sciences and the applied sciences than we are in 


THE RECORD OP SCIENCE 


295 


literature or American history. We are far worse off 
as regards economics or philosophy than in scientific 
fields. We have a faculty and a student body prob¬ 
ably third in size in America. But the library ranks 
about eighth among universities in number of vol¬ 
umes. We have, therefore, very much to add before 
our book collections correspond to our size in students 
and faculties. Harvard, for instance, has more than 
four times as many books as we have, Yale three times 
as many, and Columbia and Chicago about twice 
our holdings. This is a situation not to be remedied 
in a day—even were adequate funds in hand, as I 
have tried to show. All the more reason, therefore, 
why we should think clearly and plan wisely, and 
should cooperate with our neighbors. 

The country as a whole is in about the same relative 
state as regards the record of scientific work the world 
over as is the University of Michigan. That is to 
say, by diligent effort we can find the obscure and the 
rare, and without too much trouble can secure the 
obvious and ordinary run of books. But taken as a 
whole, the country is decidedly worse off than most 
European lands. Our scientists are at a distinct 
disadvantage when it comes to books as compared 
with those of Great Britain, France or Germany, 
or even Italy. We can only overcome this handi¬ 
cap—which is very real—by the most careful biblio¬ 
graphic work and by lending freely. 


296 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


This brings me to that aspect of our topic which was 
probably most in my friend’s mind when he spoke 
so disparagingly of bibliography. Most people ignore 
the practical and administrative side of the bibliog¬ 
rapher’s labors. They think of him merely as one 
who records what other men have done and said. 
That he is also the gatherer of material, and to a 
large extent its interpreter they forget. But the 
major function of the scientific bibliographer is that 
of indexing the record of science, after he has got it 
together. This is a highly technical job and has been 
very well done in certain fields, and very poorly done 
in others. Perhaps medicine has the best indexes. 
The great catalog of the library of the Surgeon- 
General’s Office in Washington forms one of the most 
remarkable pieces of index work ever attempted. 
The Index Medicus is a wonderful clue to the cur¬ 
rently appearing work of the world of medicine. 
Both have proven frightfully expensive. Both are 
due to the energy of one man, John Shaw Billings, 
and the extraordinary skill and devoted patience of 
his associate and biographer, Fielding H. Garrison. 
Neither has ever paid expenses and both have had a 
hard struggle to survive, despite government aid 
and the purse of great foundations. Even now we are 
threatened with a curtailment, if not the ending, of 
the catalog. Such books are very costly, but without 
them, science must perforce halt its progress. 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


297 


The pure sciences have had no such American rec¬ 
ord as these two in medicine. The Royal Society’s 
Catalogue of Scientific Papers , appearing years after 
their publication, is the most conspicuous British 
effort. And then, after years of incubation, came 
the great international undertaking known as the 
International Catalog of Scientific Literature , bearing 
the Royal Society’s imprint and prepared by regional 
bureaus under an international council. This was 
to begin with the twentieth century and to be the 
final word in all branches of pure science. Now 
unhappily the world war has brought it to a stand¬ 
still, probably to an end. But it was already breaking 
down of its own weight before the war. The plain 
speaking of the few librarians who were given any 
chance to be heard between 1895 and 1900 was utterly 
disregarded. They insisted, if I remember correctly, 
that without some provision for cumulation of entries 
at intervals of about five years the scheme would 
defeat its own ends. And their prophecy was amply 
justified before the war brought a halt to the already 
huge series of annual volumes. The set remains a 
monument to the difficulties of the task of an ade¬ 
quate index to the published work of scientists. 

A few attempts at overcoming this difficulty by 
card bibliographies have been made. Of these the 
most conspicuous is the work of the Concilium 
B ibliographicum in the field of zoology, paleontology 


298 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


and anatomy—an undertaking which is likewise due 
to an American, the late H. H. Field. This is, as 
you doubtless know, a classified bibliography printed 
on cards, arranged in very minute sub-divisions of 
the decimal classification. When you once learn how 
to use it, it is most valuable. It usually takes us 
about a year to train a girl to file the cards, and how 
long it may take a zoologist or an anatomist to learn 
how to use them to full advantage, I can not say. 
This bibliography was also stopped by the war, but 
will soon be resumed with money supplied by the 
Rockefeller Foundation. I know of no other current 
card subject bibliography on a similar scale. 

The tendency has been, on the whole, to develop 
special annual reviews in rather minute sub-divisions 
of the general field. Of these by far the most con¬ 
spicuous have been the Jahresberichte appearing in 
Germany. There was formerly no end to these special 
bibliographies—often accompanied by critical notes 
on the scope or value of the works listed. They, too, 
were mosty stopped or curtailed by the war, and. 
various efforts have been made to revive them or 
produce new ones. You each know your own favorite 
bibliographical review—but do you know the diffi¬ 
culties under which they have labored and which are 
well-nigh fatal at the present day? The chaotic 
condition of the world from an economic or political 
viewpoint is well matched as regards the record of 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


299 


science. Publication of results is still slow and 
defective—indexing of publications is more so. The 
obligation rests on America to provide both the 
means of publication and the proper clue to recorded 
work. I can hardly stress this too strongly, as I 
necessarily am forced to take a broad and general 
view of the whole situation. If the needed indexing 
of scientific (and indeed all learned) literature is to 
be done at all—it must be financed in this country. 
I can think of nothing more important for the at¬ 
tention of the American Association or the Advance¬ 
ment of Science than this very problem of adequate 
successors to those special and general indexes which 
have been so useful and which are now either sus¬ 
pended or definitely dead. 

* * * 

May I, as a layman, venture a suggestion to you 
who are experts? I feel that most of you tend to 
ignore in the organization of your work of instruction 
any presentation of two things which help to mark a 
scientist of real distinction. The first of these is a 
knowledge of how to use to the full the various biblio¬ 
graphic tools provided. It seems to me that such 
instructon in their use is a real necessity—perhaps 
not for elementary classes, but certainly for any study 
of an advanced character. The loss which comes from 
an ignorance of what has been done on any given 


300 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


problem is pathetic—loss of time, unnecessary labor, 
discouragement. It is a loss which can be avoided 
by very simple means. The gain which comes with 
full knowledge of previously published results is 
uncounted. It marks the successful from the halting 
start on any task. The complexity of the biblio¬ 
graphic indexing in most fields is so great that there 
is real need for formal instruction in handling biblio¬ 
graphic tools. No one of you ignores instruction in 
laboratory method. Should he overlook the need of 
instruction in bibliographic method? The second 
of my two marks of distinction is a broad, general 
view of the history, methods and scope of his subject, 
what in my youth the Germans used to call “En¬ 
cyclopaedic.” Few men are willing to take the time 
from their own particular researches to lecture on a 
general introduction to their subjects. But I ven¬ 
ture to point out that precisely such a broad, sweeping 
view of the whole topic is what the younger men need 
most. It can be given only by one whose reading 
has been wide, whose grasp of the whole subject is 
firm, whose judgment is matured, and whose experi¬ 
ence entitles him to speak with authority. What 
in a master makes disciples? What qualities in some 
men enable them to found a real school? Is it not 
precisely that grasp of method, that sense of relations 
of parts to the whole, that historic view and that 
prophetic insight which comes from a deliberate 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


301 


attempt to survey the whole of one’s subject, to weigh 
its importance, to contemplate not alone its past but 
its present and future? My suggestion is that stu¬ 
dents should not be left to pick up either biblio- 
grahic method or a general view of their subject from 
incidental allusion or chance comment. The need 
of both is too great and too serious to warrant the 
indifference or neglect which they now seem to 
encounter. 

To sum up, then, this attempt at some reflection 
on the record of scientific inquiry, particularly as it 
concerns us at the present hour and in this university: 
We have made a fair beginning at providing our men 
and women with the printed record of the more im¬ 
mediate past. We have at least the rudiments of a 
good collection of the important work of the remoter 
periods. We know rather precisely the direction 
which our efforts in buying should take, and more than 
a little as to the difficulties in our path. We are ready 
to do our part (I take it) in any cooperative scheme 
for furnishing to this Great Lakes region a fuller 
measure of books and journals. We know the im¬ 
perfections of our bibliographic tools. (We have 
most of them in constant use!) And we stand ready 
to contribute in this field also our own share of co¬ 
operative labor. In other words—we know our 
defects and we are trying to overcome them, and all 
we need is time and money—and perhaps wisdom! 


302 


THE RECORD OP SCIENCE 


What of the future? What may we hope for in 
twenty years, supposing no great disaster checks 
our labors? 

We may, I believe, expect to find here (available 
to a large region) the major academic and society 
publications in absolute completeness. We may 
further expect at least double the present amount of 
journals, both current numbers and bound files. We 
shall be part of a regional group of libraries, owning 
our share of the minor society publications and jour¬ 
nals, with a fairly complete whole ready for rapid use, 
distributed by air-mail in response to wireless tele¬ 
phone requests, every few hours. It ought not to 
take a man here in 1930 any longer to get a book from 
Columbus or Chicago than it now takes him in many 
European libraries—that is, six to twenty-four hours. 
We shall have a complete printed list, kept up to 
date, of all the periodicals and transactions (and 
perhaps all the books) available both in the libraries 
of our region and the whole United States. (This 
is almost in sight now! With two hundred thousand 
dollars it could be done in two years’ time!) We 
should have also a bibliographic equipment which will 
furnish with the minimum of effort a practically 
complete list of all articles and books on any topic, 
arranged in inverse chronological order, the latest 
to appear coming first. This is solely a matter of 
organization and money. It represents merely the 


THE RECORD OF SCIENCE 


303 


marshalling of a sufficient number of trained people 
to supplement work already begun on methods already 
worked out. It means applying the method of stor¬ 
ing linotype bars and using them as needed, for 
example, in the cumulation decade by decade of the 
Royal Society’s International Catalog. This work 
could be organized for the future in three years and 
printing of the first two decades of the twentieth 
century finished in five or less. I am less sure that 
it will come than I am confident of the future pro¬ 
vision in the way of books. But if and when the 
key to the record does exist, then no budding scientist 
may fail of confidence in his start, of the help in his 
labors as they go on year by year which comes from 
knowing what has been done and what is being done 
by his fellows. We shall have then ready at hand— 
not alone the record in print of human efforts to 
comprehend the universe, but also such an effective 
and useful key to that record that we may reverse 
the old saying, and affirm he who reads may run. 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 1 * 2 


We have all of us, I suppose, suffered full many 
a time and oft from the habit which seems inbred 
in lecturers of beginning as near the Creation as their 
theme permits, and slowly—so slowly—working 
down to the present age and the actual subject of 
discussion. I have always sympathized with Mr. 
Justice Bradley, of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, who once interrupted a prosy digger-up of 
past ages of the law with the remark “Sunday was 
declared a dies-non in 325 A. D. Suppose you begin 
there and come down to the present day!” So I 
shall not seek today to delve into the immemorial 
past, nor shall I attempt to trace the vast history 
of fashions nor illustrate at length their relation 
to tribal taboos or their natural growth from primi¬ 
tive man’s environment. Such philosophic—though 
attractive—phases of my topic shall not beguile me 
from those bookish paths supposed to be trod with 
propriety and decorum by the speaker on this oc¬ 
casion. 

But a few reflections on fashion—the mode—can¬ 
not be avoided if we are to consider fashions in the 

1 May Day address at the Wisconsin Library School, 1922. 

8 Wisconsin Library Bulletin, June, 1922. 

304 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


305 


world of letters. It has been well said that the 
tyranny of fashion holds us all in an unshakable grip. 
We can rise above the current mores and the rigid 
laws of convention and style only by a supreme 
effort. The average male of the species is apt to 
expatiate on the follies of the female in slavish 
devotion to the passing mode, particularly in dress— 
whereas she is a reasonably free and unfettered 
being compared to him. If I should have appeared 
here today in the flannel-shirted costume most con¬ 
ducive to comfort and ease alike of speech and move¬ 
ment, I doubt very much whether I should have 
been allowed to get past the door, and I can picture 
my hostess’s horror and dismay at my ill-bred 
failure to dress in a manner worthy of the occasion. 
A band of linen more or less stiffly starched embraces 
the neck of each man here. He wears most uncom¬ 
fortable trousers which must be creased if he be 
admitted to polite society: (In my boyhood they 
must not be creased!) He has—with a struggle of 
two full decades—emancipated himself from a long 
and stiff shirt-bosom and stiffer cuffs of white, but 
he still wears the most conventionally shaped coat 
and waistcoat and shoes. He is essentially like 
every other man in his appearance, save for dif¬ 
ferences of color in his garb. And even here, his 
choice is limited by convention to neutral tones of 
grey, brown and blue, or to sombre black. The man 


306 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


who, following his own ideas of color effects, should 
appear in a canary-yellow, a pink, or even a white, 
suit of clothes on this platform would be laughed to 
scorn and set down as a hopeless poseur. If he 
should even allow himself the luxury of white shoes 
in winter—or should dispense with that band of 
silk or satin labeled a neck-tie—he would be counted 
eccentric beyond words. We men may not indulge 
in flings at women as slaves to convention, who flit 
from fashion to fashion, who are its victims, its 
prey. Rather, I suppose, should we envy them the 
effective freedom which one year dispenses with 
high collars and bares the throat to the wintry breeze 
and the next summer swathes and conceals in furs 
the same shapely neck and shoulders. 

And yet, the temptation is strong. What mere 
man has not regarded the “dear creatures” with 
amused tolerance at rather frequent intervals. I 
walked, on the day these lines were written, behind 
a group of four women students, on the Michigan 
Campus, and I surveyed their garb with amazement 
—with “hadmiration hamounting to ha we!” Now, 
no man can ever describe women’s clothes—to the 
satisfaction of other women,—but there were certain 
features of the attire of this quartette—in no sense a 
conspicuous group, I hasten to say—which even a 
librarian who knows naught of feminine terms may 
venture to recall. Their hats were small—very 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


307 


sensibly and fetchingly small, to the masculine eye. 
They all showed a very visible more or less perma¬ 
nent “wave.” Each of them wore a short fur coat— 
each a different color—which reached nearly to the 
knee. Below this was a modest strip of skirt. Then 
silk hose—Oh, very much silk!—and then what in 
my youth were known as farmers’ arctics—now 
termed “galoshes”—two pairs buckled—two flopping. 
The only things in common with the outward ap¬ 
pearance of these misses and my own classmates of 
thirty years since were the notebooks and textbooks 
carried under the left arm. But I have no manner 
of doubt, from very vivid recollections, that the 
girls of 1892 who wore broad hats, tight bodices 
with large sleeves, full skirts which had to be held 
up at every crossing and mudpuddle, and who fur¬ 
tively sported rubber boots in very bad weather, 
were vivacious young women, keen, up-to-date, 
thoroughly alive, getting the most socially and 
intellectually out of their university career. But 
a visitor—not from Mars, necessarily—let us say 
from Central Africa where clothing of any sort is a 
most shadowy concession to convention—might well 
question, if he saw young women garbed in the two 
modes of but thirty years apart, whether they were 
of the same race, the same class, fired by the same 
purposes, and alike to prove good mothers, and good 
citizens. He would be wrong—there is no great 


308 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


change under the shifting garb of conventional 
costume. Men are men, and women are women— 
and never the twain shall understand the other’s 
ideas of fashion and of style. 

And so the world of letters has had its changing 
fashions from the day when the convenient clay 
tablet replaced the more elderly fashion of carving 
on stone for ordinary use in ancient Babylon. I have 
no doubt there were objections to the innovation 
and bitter references to the “good old days” when 
solid comfort could be taken in the imperishable 
record on alabaster slab and marble stele. I shall 
not weary you with a catalog of the various fashions 
in writing materials and surfaces, with a dissertation 
on the stylus, the reed, the brush, the quill. Nor 
shall I trace the history of papyrus and parchment, 
of rolls and codices, of wax tablets and leaden discs. 
It is a fascinating topic, and had we time we might 
find interest even in the changing fashions of letters 
—in the disappearance of ancient forms and the 
development of new ones even in that single alpha¬ 
bet of Cadmus which has given letters to the Western 
world—yes, and to lands undreamed of by those 
Greeks whose alphabet underlies that of Europe and 
the two Americas. Manuscript books had their 
fashions of writing, of ornament and of form, styles 
so pronounced and so significant that even a tyro 
can, after a little practice, distinguish a Latin manu- 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


309 


script written in Visigothic Spain from one written 
at about the same period either in Ireland or France 
or Italy. An expert can ordinarily fix the date with 
reasonable accuracy and point out the precise region 
in which a manuscript was written, though it bears 
no mark of time or place. A student of illumination 
can say with truth that a certain manuscript was 
written in France or Italy, though decorated by an 
English artist. He can, in other words, recognize the 
fashion of writing and of decorating prevailing in a 
certain age and in a certain region. It is hard to 
over-estimate the influence of the schoolmaster on 
writing. Such uniformity does it produce that any 
one of you can tell a letter written betwee 1840 and 
1870 from one written before or since that date. 
And in dealing with books written by hand the con¬ 
servative influence of fashion is even more pro¬ 
nounced and visible. 

The early printers—as I had the privilege of show¬ 
ing in this place four years ago—entered into a com¬ 
petition with the scribes. They followed in type the 
fashion of writing of the time and place with great 
fidelity in an effort to get business. It was not until 
well into the sixteenth century that fashions in print 
began to depart from the styles of handwriting and 
to set up independent modes of their own. You 
can tell a book printed before 1500 in Germany or 
France or Italy at almost the first glance. A Spanish 


310 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


incunabulum is no more like an English one than 
is a typical Spanish building of 1490 like an English 
structure of the same date. There are occasional 
exceptions which only tend to prove the rule of uni¬ 
formity. Much of the study of early printing, then, 
is a study of fashions in type and in the shape of 
books. It can only be followed successfully by one 
who has made an extensive study of contemporary 
manuscripts. This is true of early book-illustra¬ 
tion as well. One needs to know the history of the 
illumination of manuscript books, of engraving, 
and of painting to understand how the fashions in 
book illustration by means of woodcuts arose and 
changed. 

There are certain physical characteristics of early 
printed books which are perfectly apparent to any¬ 
one who has handled and seen many of them. These 
are very hard to describe. There is no norm de¬ 
parture from which may offer a scale of exact measure¬ 
ment. Perhaps in these days when measurements 
and tests are being taken of everyone’s ability to 
think, to repeat, to act, to dream, and so on, it is 
humiliating to confess our inability so to measure a 
book as to pronounce it at once the product of a 
certain press in a certain city on a certain date. Let 
us hope there are none of those new-fangled psychol¬ 
ogists and educationists present to deride—or per¬ 
haps even to appraise—the speaker. But as one 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


311 


knows his friends—even his mother—by manner 
and characteristics rather than by millimeters and 
coloric scales—so one knows books of the first fifty 
years of printing, books of the seventeenth century, 
early nineteenth century books, and so on. You 
can pick them out on a book-seller’s or library’s 
shelves from the common herd. The fashion may 
be hard to describe, the characteristics may be 
minute and almost intangible—but they are there, 
and one recognizes them. They may be concealed 
by new bindings, but even then they do not wholly 
escape notice. But in a contemporary dress books 
appear more nearly their own true selves. It is 
rare sport to hunt for incunabula, for books of the 
sixteenth century, for early English novels, for 
scientific journals by their outward shape and 
fashion. I have but lately returned from some three 
months of it, and I have been impressed anew by the 
fixity of book-fashions, by their definiteness of dif¬ 
ferentiation, by the fact that books can be so easily 
placed and named. I suppose I have recently seen 
the backs of at least two million books in scores of 
shops—and it was almost always possible to detect 
the early ones, those from the middle period, and 
those of more recent origin. 

Every once in a while some one rises to decry the 
great variety of sizes in which books are printed. 
Generally such an one has an attractive scheme of 


312 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


uniformity to urge—all books to be reduced to one— 
or at most to two—sizes. Familiar arguments as 
to convenience and ease of storage, reduction of costs, 
and so forth are brought out and aired. There is no 
answer to these arguments, any more than there is 
any answer to the plausible and wholly sensible 
plans to dress all women in uniform in the interest 
of those twin devils misnafried economy and effi¬ 
ciency. But I notice that the ladies—even the 
employees of certain great corporations—go on 
following the changing styles of dress—and the 
books continue to follow the fashion of the age in 
shape and size and outward appearance. Changes 
in presses have vastly more influence in changing 
the form of books than any notions of style or ideas 
of harmonious proportion. Before the application 
of steam to printing there was more variety, I think, 
than has been common since. But it is not true, 
as some mistakenly and carelessly affirm, that early 
books ran chiefly to folios, that the quarto was the 
prevailing seventeenth century form, and the pocket 
edition was a device of the nineteenth century. I 
have seen a small octavo printed by Gutenberg 
himself, small prayer books printed by the Giuntas 
in 1406, while it is notorious that the great Aldus 
first used his famous Italic type to produce pocket 
editions of the classics. And huge folios issue from 
the press today—less often, it is true, than in the 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


313 


sixteenth century—but perhaps in greater numbers. 
The sizes of newspapers, to take a conspicuous ex¬ 
ample, have changed with the changing presses on 
which they have been printed. Fashion in book 
sizes, in book illustrations, in book bindings, have 
depended far more on mechanical processes of book 
making than on the decisions of authors and pub¬ 
lishers. The change in the late nineteenth century 
from wood-engraving to photo-engraving (mostly a 
change for the worse) is a typical case in point. 

If you wish a fascinating subject for a winter’s 
study, let me urge you to follow the history of book¬ 
binding^—surely a study of fashion pure and simple. 
The simple elements involved in covering a book 
and then decorating the covers have lent themselves 
to an almost infinite variety of combinations. The 
materials are but few—leathers of various sorts and 
colors, pigments and gold for lettering and fbr de¬ 
signs, cloth and paper—but what a wealth of results! 
And how they group themselves into fashions of one 
or another age! The solid and plain vellum with 
lettering in India ink, a style surely born of monastic 
poverty and stern simplicity, gives way to stamped 
vellum bindings of intricate design and often of high 
artistic merit. Vellum yields to morocco with all the 
possibilities of color and pattern furnished by a more 
pliable material which can be dyed successfully. 
The graceful band’s of the Grolieresque become the 


314 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


intricate and elaborate inlays of the nineteenth 
century. Special tools and forms mark the indi¬ 
vidual binders of note, while all the devices of her¬ 
aldry enter to render elaborate the marking of owner¬ 
ship. Cloth and paper come in with the fashion on 
the part of publishers of furnishing the book in 
bound form to buyers, and come in to add to the 
beauty and variety of design and pattern. One 
may follow the fashions of an age or a country, he 
may study on the one hand ordinary commercial 
binding, and on the other the individual work of 
great artists among bookbinders. There is almost 
no limit to the search for historic form and artistic 
creation. Fashions in bindings old and new form a 
welcome side-path which the librarian, weary of 
“catalog rules” and “reference” questions, may 
pursue for his own refreshment while he labors at 
his humdrum routine. 

But all this, one may well say, is external, out¬ 
ward. The topic is fashions in books. And, of 
course, this is nothing less than literary history and 
criticism. Quite so, but the librarian pursues such 
a study from a point of view somewhat different 
from that of the university professor or the man of 
letters. He is forced to be more catholic in his 
standpoint—more universal in his acceptances. To 
him the world of letters does not mean belles-lettres 
simply—rather it connotes print—all print that 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


315 


men have used and have preserved. He does not 
unduly exalt the trivial and inconsequential. But 
as he has to take care of masses of books and pam¬ 
phlets both trivial and inconsequential when seen 
from any other than an historic point of view, he 
cannot exercise a merely selective judgment, ignor¬ 
ing the mass to single out a few choice products. 
Indeed his viewpoint is necessarily affected by the 
mass—as is the bookseller’s. Said a very wise book¬ 
seller to me on one occasion, “One pamphlet, such 
as this on the cholera printed in 1728, is worth 
nothing—not a penny. But a collection of over 
eight hundred pamphlets on cholera printed between 
1700 and 1900 is a Bibliotheca Cholerica. It has 
immense value in cash and in fact.” So in surveying 
book fashions, literary styles and modes, the librarian 
cannot confine himself solely to the great exemplars 
of those changing ideals of the centuries. He must 
perforce see also the larger numbers, must reckon 
not alone with Shakespeare and the great Eliza¬ 
bethans, but with the lesser lights of that time, and 
of less glorious days. (Indeed it is probably a 
wise precaution for him to devote himself to some 
one man or one phase of a fashion just because he 
sees so much of the other men and the other fashions). 
He views book fashions, literary conventions, chang¬ 
ing modes of expression, with both more sympathy 
and with less impatience than his critical friends, 


316 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


who constantly add to the somewhat muddy stream 
of books about books. He is likely to have a wider— 
if perchance a shallower—knowledge, to think in 
terms of thousands of volumes, even perhaps in 
terms of readers, who are generally ignored entirely 
by the historian of literature. His viewpoint is 
perhaps more philosophical, more historical, his 
enthusiasms and his dislikes less intense and per¬ 
sonal. He has to take care of (and even to promote 
the circulation of) many books which he knows to 
be the product of mediocre minds—fitted perhaps 
to current fashions, or even to fashions long dead. 
Like Solomon in Jim’s phrase from the immortal 
pages of Huckleberry Finn he is inclined at times 
“to be waseful of chillen. Dey’s plenty mo’.” And 
so let us glance at just a few fashions in the long 
history of books. 

I have often wished someone would write a real 
history of the most unreal fashion in letters known 
to me—the so-called pastoral poetry. Was there 
ever another such case of the survival of a literary 
form due to the influence of one or two great names? 
Perhaps there may have been shepherds in that 
pleasant land of Greater Greece where Theocritus 
watched the burning sun of summer disappear in 
glowing haze behind the Sicilian hills, shepherds who 
sang simple songs of their loves and jealousies, of 
nymphs and fauns, of their goats and kids. But 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


317 


once the literary tradition was set by genius, what a 
deluge of purely fictitious, unspontaneous, wholly 
artificial poems overwhelmed mankind! Not Ver¬ 
gil’s sonorous eclogues, nor Milton’s Lycidas can 
redeem the pastoral form with its flocks, its swains, 
its shepherds and goat herds, its lambs and kids, its 
shepherdesses and nymphs, its fauns and dryads. 
Through Latin to Italian, through Spanish, French 
and English, even in the guttural strains of German 
and Dutch the pastoral pipes, the love-lorn swains 
and their thin ditties resound for the ears of those 
who claim at least a tincture, a tinge of humane 
letters. And how little genuine poetry there is in 
the whole lot! Happily form classification has 
almost disappeared from our libraries, otherwise 
what a showing there would be of inane talk and 
feeble imitation masquerading as pastoral poetry. 
One occasionally hears some professor of literature 
say the pastoral as a form is dead. I wonder. No 
librarian, at least, would venture such a statement, 
which is really a prophecy. That no future age 
will revert to Amyntas and Tityrus, to Chloe and 
Silvia, to pipes and goats and nymphs, is a rash 
prediction, born, I fear, of hope rather than of 
judgment. 

As safely might one say that the epic poem is 
dead—perhaps more safely, since epics seem to 
spring mainly from the primitive experiences of a 


318 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


race. But surveying the catastrophic events of the 
past decade, sensing even vaguely the portentous 
future struggles of races under the terrible conditions 
of modern warfare, who shall deny that there may 
yet be new epic experiences which shall be echoed in 
heroic verse? Since Milton, there has been no great 
epic written in any Western tongue; no bard has sung 
the strife of nations and the deeds of warriors in 
such strains as those of Vergil and the Song of Roland. 
But no sane critic will predict that men shall forever 
be denied the hope of great poetry in the heroic 
mood. We and our children shall not be forever 
condemned to listen to vers libre and have our stand¬ 
ards set by the vacant spaces in the popular maga¬ 
zines. 

For truly—while we are speaking of fashions— 
we may not neglect that most curious of all con¬ 
temporary literary phenomena—the modern craze 
for free verse. Twenty years ago, when Browning 
and Tennyson and Whitman were dead, when the 
last of the New England group passed away in 
Lowell, when Stevenson and Kipling seemed to have 
no rivals but the thin notes of Dobson and Watson, 
before Francis Thompson had come into vogue, men 
were saying that poetry was dying out. (Despite 
the flood of verse of the last fifteen years, I am not 
sure that they were wrong!) But now what a change! 
Poets grow on every corner, self-labeled for the most 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


319 


part—and are without form, if not void. Thin 
volumes of disjointed verse pour from the presses. 
The librarian who would keep his library abreast 
of the flood of alleged poetry must know the ob¬ 
scurest printers and publishers. Poetry magazines 
and annual anthologies alone provide a harvest of 
verse, and no crossroads is so forlorn that some lines 
from its rustic muse have not penetrated the maga¬ 
zines at least. To one whose notions of poetry are 
based on Homer and the Greek tragedians, on 
Horace and Lucretius, on Dante and Petrarch, on 
Chaucer and Shakespeare, on Goethe and Schiller, 
on Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley and Brown¬ 
ing, to one whose birthright of English verse ranges 
from Ben Jonson to Burns and from Walter Scott to 
Matthew Arnold, it is rather hard to grow enthusias¬ 
tic over Spoon River Anthologies and the whole tribe 
of what Potash and Perlmutter would dub modern 
“so-called, alleged” poets. It is truly like asking 
one whose ideas of musical form have been created 
by Beethoven to praise jazz and endure practice on 
the saxophone. Perhaps it can be done. The 
old order changeth —tempora mutantur —but it is a 
wrench to change with it, and some of us are not 
equal to the task. And yet modern free verse is 
perhaps, from a philosophic point of view, the coun¬ 
terpart of modern futurist and cubist painting and 
modern music and the theory of relativity! When 


320 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


we remember how cacophonous Wagner seemed to 
the mid-century musicians and to the Parisian 
public who hissed Tannhauser, when we recall the 
almost universal repugnance with which Whitman’s 
earlier work was greeted, we wonder whether the 
trouble is with ourselves or with the newer forms of 
art. The trouble lies, in part at least, with those 
whose revolt from canons of form has led them to 
spurn beauty and nobility, to exalt the trivial, to 
mistake mere concatination of words for poetic 
feeling and expression. But it is hopeless to contend 
with their number, to endeavor to laugh them out 
of court. These newer poets are here—and they 
know it. They even go around lecturing and reading 
and almost selling their wares. As soon may we 
escape them as escape the playwrights—another 
modern invasion. 

For few fashions have so swept the country as has 
the revival of the dramatic instinct in the American 
people. Coincident with the enormous expansion of 
the moving pictures at the expense of the acted and 
spoken drama—even, perhaps, because of the ab¬ 
sence from many and many a town of any plays but 
the “movies,” there has come a renewed, almost a 
re-created, interest in plays and in the dramatic 
art. I need not recall to you the history of the 
“little theatre” movement, nor rehearse the tale 
of the English and American and Irish play-wrights 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


321 


of the past thirty years. That movement has been 
much more a literary than it has been a producing 
interest. Plays which thirty years since would 
have been acted only a few times by stock com¬ 
panies, and even other plays which achieved great 
theatrical success, would in earlier times quite likely 
have remained unprinted—the private property of 
their owners. Now, such plays are read by scores 
of thousands, for they quickly get out in book form. 
There is much reading, also, in groups and clubs, 
and an enormous and ever increasing amount of 
production of plays by amateurs purely for the fun 
of the thing. Pageants and plays have fairly swept 
the English teachers of our schools into the business 
of directing the acted drama. It. is a sorry school 
in these days which does not produce several plays 
yearly, and our universities teem with comedy clubs 
and acting societies, frequently producing home¬ 
made plays. It is worthy of note that this literary 
revival of the drama has largely proceeded on whole¬ 
some lines. A sound instinct has for the most part 
kept the excesses of the contemporary stage out of 
the schools and colleges and dramatic clubs. And 
while the theatres in our great cities have shown 
in too many cases mere carnal exhibitions of half- 
naked female forms amid colored lights and re¬ 
sounding jazz, the revived interest in the printed 
drama and in amateur acting has held itself to 


322 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


literary and truly dramatic ideals. Not that a 
Mother Grundy of my earlier day would not find 
much to reprehend on the amateur stage of today. 
She would find plenty—but she would generally be 
wrong in imputing evil to a freedom foreign to her 
own notions. Few fashions in books and letters 
have more significance than this revival of the 
literary drama. It is too early to predict its results 
—but that it is not a mere passing fad is the easiest 
of forecasts. The three decades which have seen 
Bernard Shaw, Barrie, Jones, Pinero, Fitch, Ken¬ 
nedy,—not to mention scores of others—have not 
been sterile. That literally thousands of young 
people have studied and acted the plays of these 
authors is of itself a fact of great import in consider¬ 
ing the literary history of America. After all, as I 
said before, the readers, the audience, count in the 
librarian’s view at least as much as the authors 
themselves, albeit differently. And when the readers 
act—however badly—the author has made an im¬ 
pression far deeper than that implied in mere perusal 
of his writings; yes, even deeper than that created 
by witnessing their production by really great actors. 
The play seen is but evanescent—the play acted 
has become a part of the actor’s life. 

It is, of course, a truism of literary history, that 
the novel became in the nineteenth century the 
fashionable literary vehicle of expression. We have 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


323 


all been brought up on this doctrine. We are fa¬ 
miliar with the precursors, Richardson and Field¬ 
ing, Dean Swift and Defoe. We recall—but have 
we read?—Anne Radcliffe and Horace Walpole. We 
know our Scott, and we all love him still, however 
dull he may be to the jaded literary taste of our 
juniors. We honor Thackeray and George Eliot, 
and we treasure Dickens. All this is well-trodden 
ground. But have we been conscious of the subtle 
transition in the form of the novel and in its size? 
The three-volume tradition we know died long since 
—but what killed it? Was it the impatience of a 
sated public? I incline to the belief that it was 
rather the fashion of serial publication. The great 
English and American monthlies which competed 
for the prizes of their day had—and have—precise 
limits of space in any one month. Their editors 
knew just how many pages could be spared for 
any one novel running serially. The result is very 
visible. That rather sudden transition to a shorter 
form which marks such men as George Meredith 
and Thomas Hardy from Trollope, let us say, is 
far more a matter of magazine limits and serial 
rights than one of intrinsic need and definite literary 
canons. With the rise of the cheap magazine of 
enormous circulation, the serial rights become one 
of the chief sources of revenue to authors and pub¬ 
lishers. Just how much publication of a novel in 


324 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


the Saturday Evening Post , for example, means to 
an impecunious author we can only guess, but it is 
a consideration amply powerful to cause him to 
suit his length—if not other and more vital matters— 
to the requirements of the magazine editor. And 
a further result is that—once the fashion of reasonable 
brevity has been fixed—the only way an author can 
get around the popular requirement is by producing 
another novel with many of the same characters. 
Instead of three volume novels with one title, we 
now have three or more volumes with similar titles— 
and how we buy them! Not to rise to lofty heights, 
observe how Tarzan has raced through volume after 
volume. Can anyone count the Nick Carter tales? 
Would Mulford dare to change from the Bar-20 to 
any other cattle-brand? Truly the ways of fashion 
in letters are almost as far past finding out as the 
way of a man with a maid! 

Mention of the magazine leads me to point out 
the greatest change in book fashions since printing 
began. Periodical publication is now truly the 
fashion of the day in all lines the world over. This 
form came into vogue in the seventeenth century 
with the Journal des Savants and other similar 
learned publications. For seventy-five years now 
it has been increasingly the mode for the publica¬ 
tion of the results of study in any and all fields. 
Thousands of journals keep hundreds of thou- 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


325 


sands of specialists abreast of the growth of knowl¬ 
edge in their several lines of investigation. Yea, 
more, thousands of other journals inform the banker, 
the merchant, the.artisan, the tradesman, the pro¬ 
fessor, the teacher, even the librarian, what is going 
on in his field. The journals are usually about five 
years ahead of the books in every subject. They 
form the record of progress in the sciences and the 
arts, in the crafts and trades and occupations. They 
wax more numerous with every month and in every 
clime, despite rising costs of paper and presswork, 
and in the face of a severe mortality in journalistic 
circles. Well may the perplexed and devout libra¬ 
rian say with the Psalmist— “Lord, how are they 
increased that trouble mel” How to get, how to 
keep, how to index this mass of periodical and serial 
printed matter! We must have it—we never have 
enough journals—we never have enough indexes to 
the mass of original materials concealed beneath their 
multitudinous and multiform varieties of publica¬ 
tion. Woe to the librarian who fails to get and to 
bind and to use these journals. They are the 
present-day mode of retailing (and frequently re¬ 
hashing) thought and discovery. “Fractions drive 
me mad” was a favorite tag in my boyhood. How 
true of these days! It is not the sound and single 
volumes which come whole from the publisher which 
trouble us and bring our grey hairs in sorrow to the 


326 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


grave. Rather it is these lieferungen , kef ten, liv- 
raisons, parts, fascicles, special numbers and supple¬ 
ments which do drive the poor librarian frantic. 
And how solid the satisfaction, how firm the reward 
which attends the completion and binding of any 
fractious and long-broken set! Journals—and still 
more journals—all printed on wood-pulp paper des¬ 
tined doubtless to disintegrate in the lifetime of 
these students of library economy—here you have 
the chief problem of the careful librarian of any 
research library. Will the fashion change? How 
long can it last? Will the whole literary output of 
the world soon be in periodicals? Shall we always 
be paying subscriptions, writing postcards for title 
pages and indexes, preparing for binding, paying for 
binding, buying older sets, renewing our worn-out 
Poole’s Index and Index Medicus? These ques¬ 
tions I leave with you to ponder. I and my genera¬ 
tion shall never get away from journals; perhaps the 
journals will get away from you younger folk—by 
the simple process of chemical decomposition. 

We have surveyed a few of the outward forms and 
fashions in the world of letters—forms which mark 
our day, our age. What of the spirit? Does fashion 
rule in the higher realms also? Yea, of a surety! 
far more than in the lower matters of shape and size 
and mode of publication. Looking at the temper 
of the time, seeking for its answer to the eternal ques- 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


327 


tions of the spirit, for its ideals of the true, the 
beautiful and the good, striving to understand the 
drifts and currents of an age even more shifting and 
rapid in its changes than most periods of human 
experience, it hard not to be a mere shaker of the 
head, a laudator temp oris acti of the familiar and 
age-old type. There are current fashions in the 
world of letters, fashions which boast a large and 
increasing following, which yet seem to many of us 
symptomatic of disease rather than a healthy revolt 
against the hampering limitations of an earlier time. 
Every age of license in the world’s literature has 
dubbed its critics old fogies and committed literary 
crimes in the name of liberty. Generally it has 
abused its very freedom until its vogue of profanity 
or licentiousness has died a natural death—from its 
own rottenness. It is the prevailing fashion in 
certain circles in America, as in England, to throw 
decorum to the winds, to outrage decency, to exalt 
moral looseness and to portray the pathologic—all 
in the name of art. The process is a familiar one— 
and a sorry one. It has gone on before—in the 
Renaissance, at the Restoration, before and after 
the French Revolution, in decadent Rome and equally 
decadent Vienna and Paris. No really great name in 
the word of letters has ever risen (like a water lily) 
from this muck and mire. The apology for this 
neo-eroticism usually takes the form of flings at 


328 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


Puritanism or at the New England conscience, and 
lards condemnation of bourgeois minds with pro¬ 
fane references to Anthony Comstock and the 
W. C. T. U. Puritanism in England and America 
needs no defense from me. Its achievements are a 
matter of history—its unlovely parts were never 
more than minor portions of a great whole. But 
I venture to protest that if the neo-fleshly school will 
produce any poets like Milton or seers like Emerson 
they will have far firmer grounds to stand on than 
they now occupy. When I was a young man and 
attending the university I often noticed how the 
German producers of doctoral theses loved to find a 
flaw in Mommsen’s history of Rome and ride to a 
Ph.D. degree on the discovery. So these violent 
outbursts against Puritanism in art and letters may 
serve to coin a few dollars—but will they advance 
the culture of the race? We have in America no 
lack of clean and strong writers—we can afford in 
our libraries to ignore the erotic purveyors of imita¬ 
tion European decadence, folk who imagine that 
Zola and Baudelaire and Richepin w T ere the real 
Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. But their 
fashionableness sets a sore problem for us librarians 
who are keen to be up-to-date, to provide the talked- 
of books, to furnish our various publics with the best 
in current letters, and who are neither squeamish 
nor straight-laced. But we still have a duty to our¬ 
selves and to our folk—those who employ us. When 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


329 


we buy a book for a public library we say in effect— 
“This is a book fit to be read.” I can only urge 
real courage in dealing with the question. What is 
all right for folk of wide experience, mature judg¬ 
ment, broad acquaintance with literature—is this 
likewise fitting for the callow, the impressionable, 
the “meanly-lettered?” To state the question is 
to answer it. No library ever has enough money 
to buy even a major part of the current books. Its 
funds, then, should go for such as are clean and 
decent, inspiring and uplifting, stirring and vital. 
If we do not fear Mother Grundy is making our 
decisions,—and we should not—neither may we 
forget the responsibilities we have toward hundreds 
of young people. There is plenty of good, honest, 
decent, attractive, readable stuff at hand. Let the 
other sort go. Spend the money for real bread which 
satisfieth—and don’t be afraid to say why you have 
done so! 

Fashions change. I remember a visiting Canadian 
preacher in my boyhood who prayed for an hour and 
a quarter while the small boys stood first on one foot 
and then on the other and longed for the end. What 
show would he have to get a call to a church in 
Madison? And remembering him, I shall cease 
to speak further on fashions in books. But I could 
go on—so far, so far. The modes are legion. It is 
fine to be in a work where you may observe alike 
those of Greece and Rome and of present day Chicago. 


330 


FASHIONS IN BOOKS 


That is the librarian’s privilege. He is not wholly 
of one race or clime or day. The pleasant land of 
the troubadour and the frozen North are his equally. 
He may be burdened with his work, he may not have 
enough salary to dress in the mode, children and 
bores and women’s clubs may take his time, but 
these are trifles. He lives in the spirit. He sits on 
his fence and sees the parade of books pass by—the 
gay and festive, the sad and sober, the youngest 
and oldest. He selects and he buys, he uses and he 
promotes. Some days he seems bowed beneath the 
hurrying and wearing service of the hour—but al¬ 
ways a service of ideas, of things of the spirit, of 
books. He can be no slavish and blind follower of 
literary styles—though he can rejoice in most and 
may at will decline all save a nodding acquaintance 
with others. And his one comfort as he is driven 
from literary Dan to Beersheba, from poetry to 
essay, from tax report to Greek tragedy, from Vedic 
hymns to cowboy novels is that for him all these 
diversities represent but one thing only—fashions in 
books. Without this consciousness, his mind would 
doubtless undergo the mythical fate of the chameleon 
on the Scotch tartan. With it, he manages to 
retain his own personality, his ideals, his convic¬ 
tions, to find his joy in service, his solace in books 
old-fashioned and new, his hope in a deep humanity, 
his religion in the one unchanging Spirit in a world 
of change. 


INDEX 


Academies, transactions of, 286, 
287 

Adams, John, 167 
Addison, Joseph, 123 
Adult education and libraries, 
226-251 

Advertising for libraries, 194, 
240 

Aldus Manutius, 32 
Alphabet, key to arrangement, 
111 

American Catalogue , 56 
American Historical Associa¬ 
tion, Committee on Bibliog¬ 
raphy, 179, 180 

American Library Association, 
49, 169, 196, 252-269 

-, Booklist , 147 

-, Committee on cataloging 

rules, 129 

-, Constitution, 262, 263 

-, Guide to ... . Ameri¬ 
can history , 56 

-, Publishing Board, 54 

-, Survey, 264, 265 

-, War Service, 199, 200, 

254, 255, 258-261 
American libraries, competence 
in books, 174, 175, 205, 206, 
207 

-in service, 177, 178 


Americanization, 247 
Angell, J. B., 210 
Astor Library, (N. Y.), 127, 
184, 275 

Atlases, training in use of, 112 
Audubon, J. J., Birds of North 
America , 279 

Author’s name generally ig¬ 
nored, 106, 107 
Ayer, E. E., 44 

Bacon, Francis, 123 
Bates Bequest, University of 
Michigan, 281 

Berlin. Konigl. Bibliothek, 91 
Bible, English, 123 
Bibliographer, 296 
Bibliographical Society of 
America, 56, 180 
Bibliography, 55 

-, instruction in, 119, 299 

Bibliophile, 37, 38, 45 
Billings, John Shaw, 12, 169, 
296 

Bindings, 40, 313, 314 

-, Italian, 35 

Books, basis of libraries, 2 

-, owned in homes, 236 

-, production in U. S., 103, 

104 

-,-in the world, 104 


331 


332 


INDEX 


Booksellers’ catalogs, 136 
Book shops, not found in small 
towns, 238 

-, Rome, 28-32, 36 

Boston Athenaeum Library, 87, 
127, 147, 184 

Boston Public Library, 51, 89, 
176, 184, 191 

Bradley, Justice Joseph Philo, 
304 

Bradshaw, Henry, 183 
Branch libraries, 60, 193 
British Museum, 6, 175, 276 

- Catalogue , 139 

Brooklyn Library, 127, 184 
Brown, John Carter, 44 
Buffalo Library, 184 

Card catalog, 83ff 

-, complexity, 133, 134 

-, future, 147, 148 

-, needs interpreter, 75 

-, size, 94, 95, 96, 131 

-, a tool, 132 

-, users, 132, 133 

Catalog cards, printed, 54 
Catalogers, scarcity of, 130 
Cataloging, 125-148 

-, permanence of, 147 

-, teaching, 142 

Cataloging experience, 143 
Cataloging rules, Uniform, 53 
Catalogs, card, See Card Cata¬ 
log. 

-, printed in book form, 127 

Carnegie, Andrew. Gifts to 


libraries, 43, 50, 53, 61, 63, 
167 

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, 
52 

-, book catalog, 129 

-, printed cards, 89, 90 

Cervantes, 123 

Charleston, S. C. Library So¬ 
ciety, 101 

Chemistry, libraries of, 181 
Children’s libraries, 59 
Chicago libraries, cooperation 
between, 292 

Chicago Public Library, 52 
Cicero, 243 

Circulation of books from libra¬ 
ries, 42 

Clay, Henry, 167 
Cleveland Public Library, 224, 
293 

Clubs and libraries, 248 
Cogswell, J. G., 183 
College and university libraries, 
202-225 

College curriculum, 219, 220 
College, results of, 231 
College student, attitude to¬ 
ward books, 121, 122 
College students’ reading, 117, 
118 

Collectors of books, 37, 62 

-, gifts to libraries, 62 

Columbia University. Avery 
Architectural Library, 62, 87 
Columbia University Library, 
52, 295 












INDEX 


333 


Commencement addresses, 165 
Concilium Bibliographicum 
(Zurich), 55, 297, 298 
Congresses, International, 284, 
285 

Conserving book rarities, 186 
Continuation schools and libra¬ 
ries, 246 

Continuations, cataloging, 85 
Cooperation between libraries, 
224 

Cooperation in buying books, 
291 

Cooperative cataloging, 55 
Cornell University Library, 51 
-Dante collec¬ 
tion, 62 

Cutter, C. A., 62, 127, 169, 183 
Dante, 123, 243 

Detroit Public Library, 224, 
293 

Dibdin, T. F., 147 
Dictionaries in schools, 111, 
112 

District of Columbia Public 
Library, 52, 89 
Doctoral dissertations, 280 
Drama, modern, in America, 
320, 321 

Edison, Thomas A., 167 
Education of masses, 227, 228, 
229 

Ehrle, Franz, Cardinal, 18, 20, 

25 


Emerson, R. W., 123, 328 
English literature in college 
libraries, 205 
Epic poetry, 317, 318 
European history, sources, 
180 

Evans, Charles. American 
Bibliography, 56 
Exhibits of books, 46, 47 
Expeditions, scientific, publica¬ 
tions, 282 

Experience, value of, in refer¬ 
ence work, 157, 158 

Fashions in books, 304-330 
Fashions in dress, 305, 306, 
307 

Field, H. H., 298 
Fine arts, in college libraries, 
212 

Foch, Marshal, 252 
Ford, Henry, 167 
France. Bibliotheque Nationale, 
175, 276 
Free verse, 318 

French literature, in libraries, 
206 

Garfield, James A., 49 
Garnett, Richard, 183 
Garrison, Fielding H., 296 
Gebhart und Hamack, Texie 
und Untersuchungen, 145 
Genealogical inquiries, 78 
Goethe, 123 
Green, R. H., 123 


334 


INDEX 


Hale, William G., 20 
Hamilton, Alexander, 167 
Harriman, Edward Henry, 167 
Harvard University Library, 90, 
101, 176, 180, 191, 275, 295 

-, printed cards, 

89 

High School libraries, 113 
High School, results of, 230 
Hill, Frank P., 260 
Historic method in science, 
278 

History in American libraries, 
208, 209 

History of science, college libra¬ 
ries, 217 

Hobbies for librarians, 10, 11 
Homer, 123 

Hopkins, Anderson H., 4 
Hopkins, Mark, 223 
Hosmer, J. K., 12 
Hughes, Charles E., 140 
Huntington, Henry E., 276 
Hutcheson, David, 4 

Incunabula, 310, 311 
Index Medicus, 211, 296, 326 
Indexes of books, 109 
Institut International de Bib¬ 
liographic (Brussels), 55 
Instruction in use of libraries, 
69, 114, 115 

International Catalogue of Scien¬ 
tific Literature , 55, 297 
Inter-library loans, 245 
Isolated students, 250 


Jackson, Andrew, 167 
Jefferson, Thomas, 167 

-,-, Library, 99, 100 

Jewett, C. C., 183 
John Carter Brown Library, 62, 
163, 175 

John Crerar Library, 163, 175, 
290 

-, printed cards, 

89 

Journals, 287, 288, 289, 290, 
324 

Labor unions and libraries, 249 
Lamed, J. N., 169, 183, 187, 256 
Leaders, how trained, 168 
Leadership, 165-174 

-based on knowledge, 169 

-in a democracy, 170, 171 

Leland Stanford Jr. University 
Library, 290 
Lenox, James, 190 
Lenox Library (N. Y.), 184 
Leo XIII, Pope, 27 
Librarian, knowledge of cata¬ 
logs, etc., 6 

-, memory for titles, 3 

-, superficial acquaintance, 

with books, 13 

Librarian’s attitude toward 
books, 314, 315 

Librarianship, defined, 125, 126 
Libraries, American—charac¬ 

teristics, 41 

-, European, characteristics, 

42 


INDEX 


335 


Libraries, growth in numbers, 191 

-, growth in size, 191 

-in U. S., development, 

102, 128, 129 

-, use of, by students, 28, 29, 

70 

Library buildings, 50ff, 59 

-, colleges, 212, 213 

-, universities, 218, 219 

Library commissions, 56, 57 
Library Journal , 127 
Library of Congress, 4, 52, 67, 
176, 184, 185, 191, 195, 276, 
288 

-, card catalog, 

115 

-, Jefferson Col¬ 
lection, 99, 100, 101 
-, List of Sub¬ 
ject headings , 93 

-, printed cata¬ 
log cards, 54, 55, 129, 147 

-, Reading Room, 

138,157 

-, Union catalog 

of subjects, 88, 89, 90, 97, 98 
Library schools, 61 
Lincoln, Abraham, 167 
Linderfelt, Klas August, 127 
Linnaeus, C., 280 
Loan desk assistants, 72, 73 

--, inquiries at, 71 

Lowell, James R., 168, 220 

McGill University Library, 291 
Macaulay, T. B., 123 


Madison, James, 167 
Mai, Cardinal, 15 
Manuscripts, mediaeval, in 
American libraries, 44, 308, 
309 

Marshall, John, 167 
Milton, John, 123, 328 
Milwaukee Public Library, 52 
Mommsen, Theodore, 328 
Montaigne, 123 
Museums, publications of, 281 

Natural sciences in college libra¬ 
ries, 211 

Newark Free Public Library, 52 
Newberry Library, 51 
Newspapers, 228, 229 

-in libraries, 234, 235 

Newton, Isaac. Principia, 123 
New York Public Library, 3, 
13, 52, 163, 176, 185, 190, 191 

-printed cards, 89 

-Ford Collection, 62 

New York Society Library, 101 
New York University Library, 
52 

Notre Dame University 
Library, 276 
Novel, form, 323 

Ohio libraries, 224 
“Old-fashioned” librarian, 183, 
184, 186 

Open access in college libraries, 
223 

“Open access” libraries, 59, 67 











336 


INDEX 


Panizzi, Anthony, 183 
Panizzi’s Rules , 136 
Parkman, Francis, 123 
Pastoral poetry, 316, 317 
Peabody Institute Library 
(Baltimore), 87 
Pellechet, Mile. Marie, 147 
Percent of college income for 
library, 222 

Perkins, Frederic Beecher, 127 
Personality, 198 

Philadelphia. Library Com¬ 
pany, 101 
Pius XI, Pope, 25 
Plantin Press, Antwerp, 33 
Poetry, modern, 319, 320 
Poole, Wm. Frederick, 12, 62, 
169, 183, 185 
Poole’s Index, 115, 326 
Princeton University Library, 52 
-, Morgan Collection of Ver¬ 
ges, 62 

-, Garrett Arabic MSS., 62 

Princeton University. “Pre¬ 
ceptors,” 119 
Printers, early, 309 
Proctor, Robert, 147 
Providence Public Library, 52 
Prussia. University libraries, 
Gesammtkaialog, 91 
Public libraries, 191, 192 
Puritanism, 328 
Putnam, Herbert, 188, 261 

Rare books in libraries, 39, 44, 
45, 47, 48 


Readers (in libraries), assistance 
to, 65ff 

Reader’s Guide to Periodical 
Literature, 115 

Reading habit, conserving, 239, 
241, 242 

Reading of the masses, 233 
Record of knowledge, in books, 
173, 174 

Recreational reading, 177, 242, 
243 

Reference books, 152, 153, 159, 
160 

Reference librarian, 5 

-, functions, 150, 151, 163, 

164 

-, relations to university 

faculties, 77 
Reference libraries, 154 
Reference rooms, 153, 154 
Reference work, 137, 138, 149- 
164 

Religion, books on, in college 
libraries, 208 

Required reading, college en¬ 
trance, 117 

Research, provision for, college 
libraries, 215, 216, 217, 223, 
224 

“Reserved” books, 76, 118 
Riant Collection, Harvard Uni¬ 
versity Library, 62 
Richardson, Ernest C., 180 
Rockefeller, John D., 167 
Rockefeller Foundation, 298 
Rome, 24, 25, 28ff 


INDEX 


337 


Roosevelt, Theodore, 167 
Royal Society (London). Cata¬ 
logue of Scientific Papers , 211, 
297 

Royal Society (London). See 
also International Catalogue 
of Scientific Literature 

Saturday Evening Post, 324 
Schiller, Friederich, 123 

-, fac-simile of letter, 7 

Science, libraries of, in U. S., 
277, 278 

-, method of teaching, 272, 

273 

-, historical method in, 274 

-, record of, 270-303 

Selection of books, 110, 328, 329 
Serials, record in libraries, 85, 
86 

Shakespeare, 123 
Sizes of books, 312, 313 
Slavic bibliography, 180 
Social sciences, books on, in 
college libraries, 210 
Specialists in libraries, 155 
Specialization in libraries, 163 
“Special” libraries, 161, 195 
Spofford, Ainsworth Rand, 4, 
169, 183, 184, 187, 188 
Standardization of library 
technique, 195 
Stanyhurst, Richard, 232 
Study of community, by libra¬ 
rian, 162 

Subject bibliographies, 92ff 


Subject headings in catalogs, 
93, 94, 96, 97 
Sumner, Charles, 167 
Survey of current library prac¬ 
tice, 196 

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, 12,169 
Tischendorf, Constantine, 15 
Titles of books, 108, 109 
Transactions of societies, etc., 
84 

Transcripts, 79, 80 
Traveling libraries, 57, 58 

Union shelf list, 141 
United Engineering Societies 
Library (New York), 175 
United States Army Engineer 
School. Library, 89 
United States Army. Surgeon 
General’s Library, 89, 175, 
277, 296 

United States Army, War Col¬ 
lege. Library, 89 
United States Bureau of Educa¬ 
tion. Library, 89 
United States Bureau of Fisher¬ 
ies. Library, 89 
United States Bureau of Labor. 
Library, 89 

United States Department of 
Agriculture, book needs, 178 
United States Department of 
Agriculture. Library, 89 
United States Documents Of¬ 
fice Library, 89 


338 


INDEX 


United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey, Library, 89 

United States Catalog, 56 

University of California Library, 
290 

University of Chicago Library, 
290, 295 

-, printed cards, 89 

University of Illinois Library, 
52, 290 

University of Iowa Library, 
290 

University of Michigan Library, 
66, 73, 119, 144, 224, 276, 
293,294,295,301-303 

University of Minnesota 
Library, 290 

University of Nebraska Library, 
290 

University of Washington 
Library, 290 

University of Wisconsin Library, 
290 

Use of books, 99ff 

Utley, George B., 260 


Vatican Library (Rome), 15ff 
Vergil, 123 

Viage de Sutil y Mexicana , 
139 

Washington, George, 167 
Webster, Daniel, 167 
Western Reserve Historical 
Society (Cleveland), 293 
Westinghouse, Goerge, 167 
Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 
283 

Wilson, Woodrow, 167, 168, 
227 

Winsor, Justin, 12, 62, 169, 183 
Wisconsin Free Library Com¬ 
mission, 43 

Wisconsin. State Historical 
Society, 43, 52, 175 
World War, 252, 253 
Wyer, J. I., Jr., 261 

Yale University Library, 176, 
191, 295 

-, Semitic manuscripts, 62 


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Practical Handbook of Modern Library 
Cataloging 

(Second Edition) 

The second edition of this useful manual has proven 
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The Contents: 

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* V Use of Printed Catalog Cards 

VI Cataloging Method 
VII Subject Headings 

Cloth . 152 pages 5\ x 7\ 

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THE WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY 

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